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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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ONITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



USES OF ADVERSITY. 



USES OF ADVEESITY, 



PEOVISIONS OF CONSOLATION. 



REV. HERMAN HOOKER, 

AUTHOR OF 
'the PORTION OF THE SOUL," " POPULAR INFIDELITY," ETC. 



" It is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in Charity, rest in Providence, 
and turn upon the poles of Truth."— ^acon. 

" If we so contemplate as to learn what Christ was, and expects us to be, nothing 
will be wanting to carry us happily through the journey of liit.^'— Seeker. 

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PHILADELPHIA: 
H. HOOKER, 16 SOUTH SEVEJ^TH STREET. 

1846. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 
H. Hooker, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the 
United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



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PREFACE. 



In the little work, which I now presume to 
offer to the public, it has not been attempted to 
discuss at large the various topics which have 
come under review; aspiring more to supply 
materials for the reader's thoughts, than to save 
him the trouble of thinking. With such time 
as could be given to the subject, I have not been 
able to do what my sense of its merits demanded 
from me. 

If, however, my thoughts, such as they are, 
shall impart light or consolation to any sorrow- 
ing heart, that will be an ample compensation 
for the time and sympathy, bestowed upon them. 
I can desire no higher satisfaction, and certainly 
there can be no truer honour, than to be the 
instrument of conveying comfort to the bereaved 
and desponding, and causingtheir grief to assume 
the aspect and direction of celestial love. 

H. H. 

April 28, 1846. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Soul's need of Consolation. — Its true sources, . 5 

CHAPTER n. 
Christ. — His Intercession. — His Sympathy. — His Care, 14 

CHAPTER III. 

The same subject continued. — Christ's Providential 
Care. — Godly Mourning. — Its Design and Com- 
forts. — Suffering ending in Joy, . . . .34 

CHAPTER IV. 

Divine Providence. — Means of Finding its direction. — 
Benefits of observing it. — Modes and comforts of 
relying upon it, 56 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 



Love the Solvent of Grief. — Its Compensating Power 
illustrated in Real Life. — Its A-ttribates. — Its Re- 
sources. — Its Assimilating Power. — Its Victories 
and Joys, 77 

CHAPTER VI. 

Capacities of Love. — The Beauty and Strength of its 

Working, ........ 97 

CHAPTER VII. 

Divine Goodness Displayed in our Sufferings. — Their 

Uses and Results, 115 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Concluding Remarks on Growth in Grace. — Importance 

of attention to Divine Things, . . , 138 



USES OF ADVERSITY. 



CHAPTER I. 



TRUE SOURCES. 



If we are human we must desire rest, 
and if we are considerate we must discover 
our natural destitution of it. It is the good 
we seek in every thing, and yet every period 
and condition of Ufe give signs that we are 
without it. We are not at rest in ourselves, 
nor can we be in our pursuits or successes. 
New accessions to our knowledge or for- 
tune open new sources of care as well as of 
enjoyment. We may lose sight of ourselves 
in the search of great things, and gain a sort 
2 



6 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

of satisfaction which is nearer death than 
rest. A deadened conscience, an unreflect- 
ing mind are very common though very- 
dangerous grounds of repose. This is, how- 
ever, not a resting from care but a hardening 
in it, a sleeping at the freezing point that 
must end in death or in an anguished Hfe. 
This is the best we can make of continued 
worldly successes, rested in, but how few 
attain even such a repose as this ? Sor- 
rows, disappointments, and losses distin- 
guish the course of most through life. If 
they count up the number of their hopes 
and fond desires, they can scarcely find one 
that has been fully realized. One desire or 
one object of ambition has succeeded after 
another, but httle has happened to them as 
they expected and endeavoured to have it. 
Our crosses begin with our being, and as 
we move on, life seems but a combat with 
death. The forces of life have the ascend- 



THE SOULS NEED OF CONSOLATION. / 

ency for a while, but having attained their 
maturity, they gently give place to the 
enemy, and sink down in weakness and 
decay. Dying then we ever are, or burying 
the dead ; and to be at rest in ourselves, or 
in what the world has given or can give us, 
we must conceal our real state from our 
view ; we must forget what we are, and 
what we need, what we have lost, and 
what we are losing. If we consider it, it 
will be found now that the objects or per- 
sons once dearest to us, once most depended 
on for happiness are gone, never to be re- 
called, and that those in whom our delights 
and hopes are centered now, will soon also 
be gone ; that either they may not stay 
with us, or we may not stay with them, so 
that life is as one perpetual parting scene. 
Thus to measure out our days with hearts 
set round with warm affections and lively 
hopes, is indeed to " die daily,'^ as to all just 




8 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

grounds of merely natural repose. Nothing 
but a want of due reflection, or of due ca- 
.pacity to see things as they are, can conceal 
or disguise the infelicities of our best estate. 
If we consider the men in whose hearts 
moral grief finds no place to rest; in whom 
the better qualities of our nature seem to 
be abolished, whom no lofty thoughts ever 
visit ; who are too vain, too self-pleased to 
be repentant, we cannot feel that they are 
happy, however exempt they may be from 
pain and care. They want the greatness 
on which either sorrow or joy can fix itself. 
The broken in heart and down-cast of the 
earth seem more noble, more happy than 
they. Sorrow, as well as happiness, is the 
lot of profounder souls. It is a weightier 
thing than will lodge itself in their Ught 
minds. They procure pleasure at the price 
of not thinking at all on what concerns them 
most, and what must we think of their hap- 



THE soul's need OF CONSOLATION. 9 

piness who dare not look themselves in the 
face, who are so well pleased with their 
abasement, their hollow enjoyments, that 
they can never rise to the height of desire 
for something better, never approach the 
manly virtue of being dissatisfied with 
themselves ? What they call life is but a 
perpetual dying. Living consists in the 
fulfilling of our destiny. To be living is to 
be performing a work that lasts. But they 
accumulate nothing but the means of vain 
regrets, and the close of their course will 
show that they have been dying in advance 
of their time. 

The evils and troubles of Ufe come from 
our natural corruption. It follows us into 
the deepest recesses and accompanies us 
into the streets and crowds of cities ; it is a 
living misery that cleaves to us. It is only 
as we experience deliverance from this that 
we find rest. The breaking up of hfe, the 
2* 



10 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

blighting of its hopes, the visible strokes of 
Providence, are startling and certain events 
to all. They may be more appalling to the 
natural heart, but there is a process of 
" dying to the world,'^ of " putting off the 
old man, with his affections and lusts," 
which for its difficulty and its pain is well 
styled the " crucifixion of the natural man.'' 
In this sense we must suffer and die, or be 
forever dying without finding death. What 
is natural to us, our worldliness, our '* carnal 
mind'' cannot enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. Our wish that we might so enter, 
proves what trials we should experience, 
if we were really and spiritually preparing 
for such a rest. Our calling is " to be per- 
fect," and while we are conscious of volun- 
tary defects and sins ; of doing less than 
we might to advance in holiness, if we are 
happy, it is from causes which entitle us 
not to be so. It is in shrinking from crosses, 



THE soul's need OF CONSOLATION. 11 

in departing from the just fountains of re- 
pose that we thus find rest, and rest, so 
found, comes of the dying of the true ele- 
ments of happiness within us. 

Thus is it made apparent, that, try what 
we will, succeed as we may, we cannot 
find rest out of God. We were made in 
His image, made to enjoy Him. As our 
Creator, He alone can communicate the 
happiness which is suitable to His design 
in our creation. As creatures who have 
lost His image and His favour, we can be 
happy only in proportion as we regain 
them. That we might regain them, He has 
gone to an expense which forbids our sup- 
posing He will give us rest in any other way; 
an expense so great, that the good it pro- 
cures must be the greatest He can confer 
— the great and only reality of good to be 
found. 

God is now merciful; He deals with us 



12 USES OF ADVERSITY* 

through the medium of His Son. If we 
will be reconciled to Him as He is to us 
through Christ, we shall have peace, and 
the blood of Christ shall cleanse us from all 
unrighteousness, but if not, God will have 
judgment without mercy ; justice will hold 
the scales, and his condemnation will dry- 
up all the sources of hope and good. This 
is a result of evil proportioned to the cost 
and preciousness of the good we decline, 
and both reason and conscience give forth 
this " looking for of judgment and fiery 
indignation.'^ This is the handwriting of 
conscience upon the wall which we need no 
prophet to divine. Never shall we find 
peace till we come to God by Jesus Christ, 
come as straying children, despairing of help 
in ourselves. Then shall we find strength 
and consolation. Then shall the sorrows 
of Hfe and the severities of a religious prac- 
tice prepare the way for its blessings. 



THE soul's need OF CONSOLATION. 13 

To unfold this truth, to brighten its evi- 
dence, to exhibit its beauty and its power 
as hved on by faith, to hold it up as 
streaming with consolation for the broken 
in heart, as giving strength to the weak, 
succour to the tempted, and victory to the 
contending, is my remaining design. This 
high end I can hope but poorly to accom- 
plish ; but should it be given me purely and 
singly to aim after it, that alone will be an 
ample reward of the service. 



14 USES OF ADVERSITY. 



CHAPTER II. 

CHRIST. HIS INTERCESSION. HIS SYMPA- 
THY. HIS CARE. 

The causes of our sorrow being numerous 
and unavoidable, and our sorrows unprofi- 
table and consuming unless sanctified by Di- 
vine grace, our first step towards the attain- 
ment of consolation is to come to God by 
repentance and faith in Christ, through whom 
alone we have access to Him, and the for- 
giveness of our sins. This done, we are 
children under discipline for heaven. No- 
thing can befall us, which shall not be 
overruled for our good. With our tempta- 
tions there shall be succours and ways of 
escape. With our pains and griefs there 
shall be a kiUing of corruption within us, 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 15 

and a springing up of life and joy under the 
renewing operation of the Spirit, given to 
witness and seal our adoption, to take of 
the things of Christ and show them unto 
us, and to be in us a living fountain of 
strength and consolation. 

The blood of Christ, sprinkled upon our 
consciences and purifying them from dead 
works, takes the sting out of sorrow, and 
brings a "peace which the world can neither 
give nor take away." Its successes, its 
honours, its pleasures cannot impart it, nor 
can its humiliations, its losses, its disasters 
overthrow it. It is the "peace of God,'^ 
given, " not as the world giveth,'^ and no 
events, no creatures can take it from us. 
As there is peace in heaven, the peace that 
comes of purity, confidence, and love, so 
there is peace in us when our guilt is purged 
away, and confidence and love are spring- 
ing up as the free breath of life upon the dead. 



16 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

The question then of the reader's union 
with Christ I must consider settled. If 
he have doubts of his rights and privileges 
in Christ, it is only as faith and love clear 
them away, that he can be justly com- 
forted. On this point he should not rest 
in doubt, and doubting, must lose the con- 
fidence and legitimacy of all true joy. What 
distils on the assured heart like the " oil 
of gladness,'^ and breaks on the ear like 
news from heaven, or the sweet voice 
of the best beloved, strikes his soul with 
awe, and sounds as the complaint of 
one mourning the insecurity of his highest 
good. 

The voice of God our Redeemer to the 
weary and heavy laden is, " come unto me 
and I will give you rest.^^ As quickly as 
His word brought light out of darkness, 
can He bring joy out of our sorrow, strength 
out of our weakness, and hope out of our 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 17 

despair. His sympathy, the owning of His 
love is a creature's health and gladness. If 
we be members of Him, there can be no 
perishing of our life, and no prevalent sor- 
row therein. We shall partake of His 
fulness, not more of grace and truth than of 
life and joy. 

The riches of Christ, who can unfold them, 
who can sound their depths ! He has re- 
deemed us from the curse of the law, by ful- 
filling it for us; yea more, by giving himself 
for us, He has magnified it and made it 
honourable, so that God can be just in justi- 
fying us in Him. He did this too in our na- 
ture, stooping to our state and sympathies, 
and subjected to our infirmities and tempta- 
tions, that He might be our merciful High- 
Priest in things pertaining to God. It was 
not alone that He might have power and 
merit to procure all things for us, but that He 
might be ^^God with us,'' in such a sense as 
3 



18 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

to bring Him near to us, and us to Him in 
sympathy. His humanity is our property 
in Him, a fellowship wherein we have bold- 
ness of access to God, and a pledge of His 
sympathy and acquaintance with our nature 
and wants. 

0, what exaltation, what privileges of 
nearness and affection have we in Christ as 
the first begotten of many brethren! Hav- 
ing been tempted in all points, as we are, 
he is indeed our merciful intercessor with 
God. Having a feeling of our infirmity 
He is qualified to succour us, and passion- 
ately disposed towards us; and as being 
God, and having infinite merit in His con- 
descension and work, He is ever prevailing 
with the Father. 

What treasures of confidence and conso- 
lation then have we laid up in him ! His 
work in our redemption from the day of 
His ascension until now, has not ceased to 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 19 

plead in our behalf. His work in our 
sanctification pleads for us with a perpetual 
intercession. In our godly sorrows and 
trials, in our faith and love, in all our dying 
to the world and living unto God, there is 
a dwelling of Christ in us, which we may 
style his interceding and commending of 
us to his and our Father in heaven. When 
temptations assail us, when desolation comes 
in like a flood. He turns as with our sym- 
pathies to the mercy-seat, and claims our 
protection as a right of his own. Such is 
the indwelling and sympathy of Christ with 
us, that our griefs are in some sort His, and 
our inward life as the breathing and voice 
of his intercession for us; and if not a 
breath of his is unheard, what may we not 
expect from his full voice, which is the 
voice that spoke out a creation at first ! 

But we have His sympathy in our grief 
no more certainly than in our joy, and this 
gives a sweetness to the latter which excels 



20 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

any thing that angels have ever tasted, as 
much as our debt of gratitude to Him ex- 
ceeds theirs. This consideration gives a 
special value and dignity to our joys, and 
should greatly endear to our hearts the 
precept to " rejoice always/^ There is a 
joy in believing, a joy in the Spirit, a joy 
of sweet and trusting affection, which is 
quite compatible with all that is permitted 
to befall us, and which should ever be 
esteemed our duty and privilege in Christ 
Jesus. Our holy joys also, as well as our 
griefs are parts of His pleading for us, as 
both are the fruits of His grace, and repre- 
sent Him in us. And if the angels of God 
could sing for joy at his birth. Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace and 
good will towards men, how much more 
should we rejoice and sing when He is 
born in our hearts, and our rejoicing is 
His, and the giving of glory to Him ? 
Unsearchable, indeed, are the riches of 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 21 

Christ. He was the Son of man, that He 
might die in our offending nature, and He 
was the Son of God that His death might 
have merit to save us. He was God and 
man in one person, that we might be one in 
Him, members of his body, of his fleshy 
and of his bones, so that we live, yet not 
we, but Christ liveth in tis. 

When weak and tempted, when bowed 
down in anguish, it is not alone that we 
suffer ; we suffer with Him ; ours is a 
fellowship of his sufferings, and we know 
that He ever liveth to make intercession for 
us. Yea, He loves and knows us so, that > 
we cannot have a joy or a sorrow which He 
does not make his own, cannot receive a 
gift, or even so much as a cup of water, 
which He will not esteem and reward as 
given to Himself. 

He would have us know, too, His rela- 
tionship to us, how near and dear it is, and 
3* 



22 USES OP ADVERSITY. 

sends us messages daily by his Spirit, as 
He did by his first disciples ; Go to my 
brethren J and say unto them^ I asctnd to 
my Father and your Father^ and to my 
God and your God, This, too, is the proof 
of our title to kindred with Him, which He 
delivered to us, Whosoever doeth the will 
of my Father^ the same is my brother^ 
and sister^ and m.other. 

Now I would have every sorrowing per- 
son consider "this one thing/^ the excel- 
lency of the knowledge of Christ. If you 
are a true believer, you are in the dearest 
of all relations to Him, and sharing in his 
fullest sympathy. At this moment He is 
feeling, yea, pleading for you. As He gave 
Himself for you, even to the death of the 
cross ; so now He prays the Father, by his 
cross and passion, by his death and sacri- 
fice, that your faith may be strengthened, 
your services accepted, and your sufferings 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 23 

made to work for your good. Your name 
is engraven on his heart ; you are never 
out of his mind ; you are given to Him in 
an everlasting covenant, and what He asks 
for you must and will be done. To you it 
is a favour ; to Him it is a right purchased 
with his blood. He claims it for you by 
all the worth there is treasured up in Him, 
and by all the sanctity of the law He has 
fulfilled for you. He presents you to God 
redeemed and justified in Himself, yea, He 
presents your performances, sorrows, and 
desires, perfumed with the incense of His 
merit, so that they and you are faultless 
before the Father, who feels not more bound 
by His covenant than disposed by his own 
love freely to give you all things with 
Christ. 

It was the prayer of Christ, " Father, I 
will that they also, whom Thou hast given 
me, be with me where I am, that they may 



24 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

behold my glory which Thou hast given 
irie.'^ This expresses His desire for His 
people, and the same is carried forward in 
His priestly intercession. It includes every 
thing which is fitting to prepare them for 
such a holy and glorious vision ; and if we 
can but believe, but realize our interest in 
His pleading, we must feel it is well with 
us, no matter what befalls us. We are one 
with Christ in God. By virtue of His in- 
tercession we have a communion of comfort 
and grace, and are assured, that all events 
will be dispensed for our profit. It is not 
more given us to believe on His name^ 
than it is to suffer for His sake, that is, 
our sufferings are the gifts, the privileges of 
His calling, the methods by which that 
calling is made sure, and we fitted for rest 
in Him, as by a dying unto the world and 
a living unto Him. As He was perfected 
through suffering, so are we ; it is the end. 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 25 

the sweetening result of all He gives us to 
bear. 

There is strong consolation in every 
view we can take of this subject. Christ 
is set down at the right hand of God, there 
to receive gifts for men. All power and 
judgment are committed to Him, and He can 
dispense his love and his grace as He will. 
He said, before his parting, '^ If I go away 
I will send the Comforter,^^ His bodily 
presence is withdrawn, but Christ in his 
Spirit is with us still : " Lo, I am with you 
always, even to the end of the world. ^^ He is 
with us, and what is more. He is in us the 
hope of glory. What a comfort is it to know 
that He ever liveth to dispense a gift like 
this ; that through sanctification of the Spirit 
and the sprinkling of his blood, He is ever 
presenting us before his Father, not merely 
as needing his love, but as entitled to it for 
his own sake ? No wonder the Spirit is 



26 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

given to seal us unto the day of redemption, 
of full entrance into his joy, and to make 
intercession for us with groanings which 
cannot be uttered. They are as the effects 
of Christ's interceding for us, as the echos 
of his voice, and it is thus we have com- 
munion with the Father of our spirits, and 
derive from Him life, health, and spiritual 
enlargement. 

And if we consider that Christ was ap- 
pointed to be a Priest unto God for us, that 
having died for us, He might present his 
death and passion ; yea. Himself even by 
way of intercession in our behalf; that God 
is well pleased in Him, and heareth Him 
always, yea, loves us too with the love 
wherewith He loveth his own Son, — a love 
which giving Him for us, can give no 
greater, and Avill withhold no lesser good, — 
may we not come boldly to a throne of 
grace, not doubting that we shall receive 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 27 

whatsoever we ask in his Son's name, and 
through the interceding of his Spirit. To 
have such a resort as this in perplexity, in 
weakness, and in trouble, is surely to have 
the mastery of them ; it is the openuig of 
the wells of salvation that we may quench 
our every thirst, and feel, as we taste, the 
springing up of life in God. What is all 
other life to this.^ what is our greatest 
shining in the eyes of men, compared with 
the lustre we can take on here, which, 
though it may not dazzle, is yet the Spirit's 
brightness, which is the light of heaven ? Is 
it true that we ever sink under sorrow, and 
a thick gloom broods on our soul, when we 
know that we have such an advocate, such 
a sympathizer as Christ ? Is it true that 
our hearts so set themselves on creatures, 
that losing them, their aid, or their sympa- 
thy, we wither and bend as if we had no 
springing up of our affections to better 



28 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

things, when the good, the love we have of 
all creatures, is but a hint of the greater 
good and love we have in Him, and the 
withdrawing of theirs is but the unfolding 
and assuring of His to us? Can friends, 
can creatures love like God ? Their love 
is more worthy of our esteem than any 
thing else they can give, but it cannot make 
us worthy of itself, and not seldom harms us 
by making us love ourselves, which is the 
dwarfing of the inner man ; but God's love 
enlarges the heart, as a continual going 
forth to Him, and returning of comfort and 
worth from Him. It makes beautiful its 
object, and treasures its own excellence 
therein. Its strength too, it is not a blind 
strength : it is not a force that breaks on us, 
and then is withdrawn : it is an everlasting 
love, tiring not with serving, revolted not 
by our unworthiness, chilled not by our 
poor returns. The love of creatures may 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 29 

be exhausted ; it looks for returns, and is 
impatient, they tarry so long and come so 
empt}^ ; our coldness is apt to embitter or 
destroy it ; it seeks us not as humble to 
exalt us, but rather seeks us that we are 
exalted ; esteems us not that we are worthy 
to be esteemed, and flies from us when it 
sees us trembling and doubting to aspire to 
it. Divine love takes its motive from our 
low estate, finds us out in our obscurity, 
smiles most on us when our unworthiness 
dares not look up to behold it, and delights 
to cheer our poverty with its richest minis- 
tering. 

Let us then set our affections on things 
above^ and give to Christ our loves, hopes, 
and joys. He has given us his, and He 
will accept ours, and treasure them up 
against the day of his appearing. Our 
affections are precious gifts in his sight, and 
they should be in ours. They should be 



30 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

set too on precious objects, and nothing that 
perishes with the using, nothing that dies or 
can die, is so precious but'that we should 
quickly part with it for Him. He is the 
great thing, and having Him, we shall have 
the best good of all others. Our adversities 
and disappointments shall be our friends 
and helpers. The things that we account 
loss and dross, shall be turned to gold. Nor 
shall we be without sympathy in the pro- 
cess. In all our ajfiictions He is afflicted. 
Having had experience in our outward and 
inward sufferings, He knows and compas- 
sionates our case. The sweetness and worth 
of all these our passions and sensibiUties 
are in him as God-man, and therefore He is 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities, 
and is moved to intercede for us, with a 
perpetual memory of what we are and what 
we need. 
The first action of our sorrow should then 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 31 

bring to mind his intercession, and our first 
relief should be sought in applying to Him ; 
in casting all our cares npon Him, know- 
ing that he carethfor us. The sympathy 
of friends may be sweet, but it cannot turn 
our troubles to blessings. His sympathy not 
only soothes, but improves and enriches its 
object. When affliction comes and all crea- 
ture-help fails us, we are ready to invite the 
prayers of the faithful, we put our confi- 
dence in those alone who have power with 
God, but in Him we have an advocate who 
can never mistake our necessities or be ig- 
norant of them, who is as well disposed to 
us as we are to be relieved, and who pre- 
vails always and obtains the blessing He 
asks. If we can but obtain his ear, but move 
his sympathy, that meed, He is so ready to 
give, and we so urgent to receive, no temp- 
tation shall overcome us, no disaster shall 
cast us down ; His first notice shall be as 
his voice, Peace, be still, and there shall 



32 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

be a calm, a healing sweetness in the soul, 
such as none can know who have not been 
rescued from danger, or relieved in distress 
by His hand. 

The trials which He gives and delivers us 
from when their design is accomplished, im- 
part a taste of good, an insight of happiness 
so superior, that the soul feels there is no 
enjoyment out of Him, and acquires such a 
distaste for the pleasures and stores it would 
have rested in, that they become as poverty 
and grief to it under the hiding of this better 
good; yea, if this be but slightly veiled, 
something like a thick gloom seems to settle 
on the world. It is to give us this sense of his 
preciousness, that He checks and foils us in 
our search and love of other things. Who 
ever tasted His graciousness, working a 
sweet acquiescence in His will, without 
pressing after a fuller fruition of it ? With- 
out feeling the insufficiency of every thing 
else to take its place ? The best virtues and 



INTERCESSION OF CHRIST. 33 

sensibilities of creatures which so engage 
our hearts and make their loss so great a 
grief to us, are but a faint shading and 
sprinkhng of Himself, intended to exalt our 
faith above them, to assist us as light does, 
to behold with our eyes its source, and feel 
the cheering of its all-surrounding presence. 
Yes, these affections so pleasant to give and 
receive, and these graces of ours so justly to 
be prized, are as tapers which God keeps 
burning for us to see Him by, as wings He 
gives to assist our rising to Him, and if it be 
in these we rest, no wonder he should im- 
pair or extinguish them, since the perfection 
of them is in Him, and He only can make 
the returns we need. 

"Truth of subliming import ! with the which 
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul, 
He from his small particular orbit flies 
With blest outstarting ! From himself he flies, 
Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze 
Views all creation, and he loves it all, 
And blesses it, and calls it very good !" 
4* 



34 USES OF ADVERSITY. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.- 

PROVIDENTIAL CARE. GODLY MOURNING. 

ITS DESIGN AND COMFORTS. SUFFER- 
ING ENDING IN JOY. 

Seeing God as we may see Him and as 
He would be seen in all his works and crea- 
tures, they will be as our evening lights, 
very useful when the sun is absent, but if 
he be risen we can do without them. That 
we may thus trace Him and find Him out, 
He gives us pledges of sympathy and care, 
feels and prays with us and for us, and sets 
his marks and stars on us, so that our walk 
of faith is assisted as it were by sight and 
sense. If He send a great affliction it is his 
voice which we heard not in its whisper- 
ings ; it is a workman come into our service 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST, 35 

as with the sound of hammers. And how 
well is it when we are made to hear, when 
every grace is roused to action, and the soul 
in review finds and is ready to say, ^' Before 
I was afflicted I went astray.'^ 

If the desire of our eyes is taken away, if 
pain or sickness is sent, we are then the most 
fit and inviting objects of Divine compas- 
sion. The solaces of the Divine Comforter 
are given then if ever, as they are never 
more largely dispensed than when most 
needed. It is thus that God makes himself 
"All in all'^ to the soul. It was not till John 
was in bonds, a prisoner in Patmos, that his 
vision was illumined, and he saw heaven 
opened, and heard the new song. 

It was the prayer of our Divine Interces- 
sor, not that we should be taken out of the 
world, but that we might be kept from the 
evil that is in it, and this prayer is his now, 
and is answered in all the pains of our dying 



36 USES OF ADVERSITY. , 

to the world, in all the strokes that sever 
our affection from creatures, and in all the 
light that comes into the mind out of dark- 
ness. 

It is very common for persons to form 
connexions and to place themselves in situ- 
ations without considering the influence they 
may have upon character. They thus ex- 
pose themselves to the evil that is in the 
world. But as the disposition which rashly 
ventures on danger, and encounters tempta- 
tion is evil and unfilial, it can ordinarily be 
corrected only by bitter experience. Lot 
chose the plain of Jordan, though he knew 
he should expose himself to the " conversa- 
tion of wicked men,^^ and how was he pre- 
served from this evil ? He was soon carried 
into captivity, and when after his recovery 
he settled in the cities of the plain, he was 
stripped of all his property, and was at last 
compelled to escape for his life, to be snatch- 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 3T 

ed away as a brand from the burning. When 
our plans of happiness fail and our goods 
are spoiled, we may take comfort if it be in 
answer to the intercession of Christ, and in- 
tended to keep^us from tlie evil of resting in 
creatures. We may be sure too, if we be- 
long to Him, yet set our affections on things 
below, or rush into temptation and put our 
virtue in peril, He will be heard, and if our 
frowardness be not checked, when we have 
strayed but a little, a heavier blow will be 
required and will surely fall on us. 

David too, we see not how he could have 
escaped " the corruption that is in the world,'' 
if he had been permitted to prosper in his 
ways. Blow after blow fell upon him, hea- 
vier and heavier, till he embraced the hand 
that smote him as his life, and died to flesh 
and sense. His very griefs seemed to have 
been gifted as with voices to utter praise. 
The very bitterness of his woes was as the 
rising up and passing off of the dregs of his 



38 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

nature, leaving all below as the pure sweet- 
ness of heaven. 

But while it is certain that Christ's 
intercession and care for his people must 
ensure their deliverance from evil, it is not 
certain what methods he may employ, nor 
are we, who can see only the outward man, 
to infer that His afflictive dispensations prove 
the guilt or unfaithfulness of those on whom 
they fall, no more than his bounties attest 
the merit of those who receive them. He 
is a sovereign in all his dispensations, and 
what we may know is, that what he does 
is best. The secret cherishings of the heart 
are known to Him, and there is doubtless a 
measure of adaptation to them and to our 
growth in grace in all his pleadings and dis- 
pensations. In our own case we may often 
see, and should study the reason and end of 
what He dispenses, but in the case of others 
we cannot know, and should not be curious 
to inquire. Job was a righteous man not 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 



3d 



needing chastisement as we can see, yet 
never was one afflicted as he was, or so 
crowned and honoured at last. One thing 
then we may and must infer from what we 
see happening in the world, that temporal ad- 
vantages and blessings are no infallible token 
of the Divine favour, and that their value 
and importance are not estimated by our 
rules of judging ; in short, that God so light- 
ly esteems them, that he gives and withholds 
them in such a way as leaves none, not even 
his dearest children, to determine his favour 
from them. The better part ^ which they 
have chosen, is so far better, that the with- 
holding or bestowing of these things, seems 
not to be taken into the account of his regard. 
The most devoted Christians are sometimes 
distinguished by the severity and number of 
their trials. Nothing seems to prosper that 
they take in hand. They are " troubled on 
every side;'^ their plans of worldly advance- 



,49 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

jpieiitcome to naught ; their children do not go 
iin the way of their training ; the wicked rise 
np against them, and they seem to live as 
saints wearing out. To them it is especially 
given not only to believe in Christ, but to suf- 
fer on his behalf, and although this discipline 
cannot be seen to be needed in their case more 
than in that of others, it no doubt magni- 
fies the grace of God in them, and will one 
day be so cleared up, as to be the ground of 
their wonder and praise. This important 
lesson it certainly teaches, that it is the end 
of our salvation, and not our brief comforts 
by the way, on which the eye of Divine love 
is fixed. It is very conceivable also that 
the thoughts of our low condition in the 
world, of the painful course we run here, 
will greatly sweeten the repose of heaven. 
If we see that God has been glorified, that 
through our poverty and sorrow rightly 
borne, he has given lessons of faith and 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 41 

patience to others, how light will these af- 
flictions then appear, and how exceeding 
and eternal the Aveight of glory they bring 
to lis ? We know but little, and but little 
can know, but God is infinitely wise and 
good, and must order all things for the final 
good of the redeemed. We make too much 
of our life, of its conditions and advantages, 
and it is this which chiefly perplexes us in 
judging of the ways of God. What we en- 
joy and what we lose is over prized, and 
this makes it diSicult to see the wisdom of 
His dealings. It turns our thoughts on 
ourselves, on the means of improving our 
condition, and sets us designing and act- 
ing for this life, as though we had lost all 
suspicion of a better ; as though we had 
never known and could not learn that the 
impoverishing and embittering of this, may 
be turned to the enriching and sweetening 
of that ; as though we would prefer the 
5 



42 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

shadows and hints of any good if we might 
rest in them, to the brightness and comple- 
tion of every other, if they be to be waited 
for ; as though grown up and just ready to 
enter upon our inheritance, we had betaken 
ourselves again to childhood, and our little 
crosses were as the bursting of our hearts, 
and our minutes were as years of waiting 
for the promised blessing, 0, if we could 
look at our worldly state through the eyes 
of faith, if we would consider our life, how 
short it is, a vapour which the sun no sooner 
rises on than it is exhaled, a breath of our 
being as contrasted with its duration, we 
should be struck with the littleness of what 
we lose or gain, and the tide of grief would 
be stayed. Our wonder would be not that 
we suffer so much, but that we have any 
thing to enjoy ; not that we fail to acquire 
great things, but that we are thought of at 
all; and thus weighing things in the balances 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 4B 

of the sanctuary, thus coming to ourselves, 
we should remember we have a home to go 
to, and a welcome inheritance there. We 
should be ready to exclaim, 

" 'Tis the sublime of man, 
Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves 
Parts and proportions of one wond'rous whole." 

Ceasing to wonder that our thousand 
desires are not gratified, that we are not 
singled out and set above the many, our 
little comforts would swell into treasures, 
the little spot of land we hedge around, 
would be as a father's garden, bearing the 
richest fruits and scented with the fragrance 
of the sweetest flowers, and we should feel 
as invited out by his voice to inherit all 
things. ^^ Blessed are the meek, for they 
shall inherit the earth.^^ Their love shall 
be as the gathering of its best fruits, yea, 
the feeding of others upon them shall be as 



44 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

their own sweet partaking to the full, and 
at the harvesting, their garners shall be 
filled; "good measure, pressed down, and 
running over, shall God give into their 
bosoms/^ 

'^ Blessed, too, are they that mourn, for 
they shall be comforted/^ Not that there 
is any thing in sorrow that can entitle to 
blessing. No ; imagine not that because 
you are poor, unfortunate, afflicted, or de- 
spised, you are thereby commended to the 
favour of God. Present sufferings have no 
value except as they are improved; they 
belong to " the sorrow of the world, which 
worketh death.^^ But there is a sorrowing, 
a mourning which is attended with blessing, 
and this you should consider, not that you 
may be relieved from it, but that you may 
find your title to be comforted in it. It is 
a " sorrow for sin after a godly sort/^ This 
is a comprehensive sorrow, and its sources 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 45 

and objects are on every side. It is not 
repentance, but a means of producing it; 
it " worketh repentance unto life.'^ This 
shows the kind of blessing with which it is 
connected, and the grounds of it. Sin is 
the procuring cause of all we suffer, and 
we can have no mourning that should not 
bring it before the mind as the evil and 
bitter thing. 

He, whose mourning takes this turn, 
and comes to this result, will attain a deep- 
ening abhorrence of sin, and this again 
will quicken the "sorrow that worketh 
repentance/^ Thus will he learn to love 
much, because he will see more and more 
that much is forgiven. He will look on 
Him whom his sins have pierced, and 
" mourn apart with a great mourning,'^ as 
though he could never forgive himself, 
though he may be forgiven. This senti- 
ment rises up from a fountain of blessed- 
5*^ 



46 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

ness already opened within him. It makes 
his a mourning yet blessed life. He chooses 
to mourn, yea, if he could not mourn, he 
would lose all relish of his enjoyments. 
His mourning is the spring of his love and 
gratitude, and the best happiness he knows 
or desires to know, is to be grateful for his 
redemption and to love his Redeemer, and 
because he is no more grateful, and no more 
loves, he feels it is blessed to mourn. There 
is a dignified acquiescence, a courageous 
bearing in his suffering, as if it were more 
the privilege of his unworthiness, which 
he might use to its subduing, than a thing 
to be complained of, or hastily relieved. 

But the true occasions for mourning on 
account of sin, are not found in ourselves 
only ; they abound on every side. The 
world is lying in wickedness, and he who 
has fled for refuge to the hope set before 
him, cannot be indifferent to the condition 
of others. Wretched men desiring not the 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 47 

knowledge of the Lord, crimes and oflfences, 
like the blood of Abel, crying aloud from 
the ground, the general neglect of the Gos- 
pel, the prevalence of unbelief, the world- 
liness and inconsistent lives of those who 
call themselves Christians, — these and the 
like are sources of blessed mourning. The 
Psalmist says, " Rivers of tears flow down 
my cheeks, because men keep not thy law.^' 
So every good man mourns, and is blessed 
in his mourning. 

It is manifest that mourning for such 
causes must make the soul happier, as it 
tends to repentance and better living ; " not 
unto ourselves, but unto Him who hath 
given Himself for us.'^ And if we will 
rightly consider it, it will be seen that we 
can have no affliction which may not come 
under the class of blessed sorrows ; so that 
if we mourn " after a godly sort,'^ we may 
feel that ours is the benediction of Christ, 



48 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

and that we have His sympathy, His inter- 
cession to secure the blessing. Besides that 
there is a tendency in this mourning to invite 
His regard, there is a working in it of re- 
pentance, to which He has promised ever- 
lasting life. This then is the mourning and 
heaviness which we may not desire to shun. 
It is our fellowship of the sufferings of 
Christ. They were all on account of sin, 
sin tasted for us, our sin punished in Him ; 
and our grief is our sin tasted, and sin abroad 
vexing the soul and taxing the sympathy, 
as an offence to Him and the destruction of 
our fellow men. What consideration can 
be more worthy to enlist our patience, what 
view of the trials of life can be more con- 
soling? Let us not lose the advantage of 
it through any conceit that it does not apply 
to ourselves. Is not God^s favour life, and 
his loving kindness better than life, and 
if we mourn ^^ after a godly sort'^ we have 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 49 

both, and what can we have .that is not a 
cheap exchange for these, or having these, 
what can we want? We must feel this, 
for He declares it, and gives his people to 
know it. What is more. He makes them 
know it through suffering. Where sin 
abounds grace does much more abound in 
overcoming it, and where grief abounds on 
account of it, there joy does much more 
abound and overflow. Strange as it may 
seem, godly sorrows are the roots and 
sproutings within us of the truest joy. 
We must believe this or doubt that it is 
possible for God to make us happy. All 
the blessings and promises of the Gospel 
import our distress. They are offered and 
made to operate as our healing and con- 
solation. > 
When we consider the work and offices 
of Christ as a Saviour, his care, his sym- 
pathy, his benedictions, his promises, we 



50 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

discover that '' He came not to be minis- 
tered unto, but to minister'^ — a remedy for 
our state, which implies our destitution of 
happiness and our sinking into deeper woes. 
His service is only welcome when we feel 
our state. Our grief is produced in order 
to our joy. Tliere is no sorrow of the 
Christian but seems to point to and lead on 
to joy. His trials for the present are con- 
nected with the glory of the future. He 
reaches happiness through tears, but they 
are not tears of misery, because he is con- 
soled in them. He is enabled to overcome 
sorrow with joy. His sufferings humble 
him and make him grateful for the good- 
ness which relieves them. His selfishness 
is reduced with his complaining. He is 
Jiappy. His penitence, his humility, his 
weakness, his poverty of spirit, are all ele- 
ments of the truest happiness and the cer- 
tain fruits of godly sorrow. 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 51 

If our sufferings could have the effect to 
raise us to an elevation where we should 
have no pride of life nor fear of man ; 
where the world should lose its charms, 
and eternity be ever near, we should not 
feel the need of consolation. It is the ten- 
dency of all godly sorrow to produce this 
effect. We should not have this sorrow if 
we had not sin, and did not love the world 
too much. But we are so prone to stray 
from duty, we love so languidly, we have 
so much that must die within us before we 
can fully live, that for us to improve is to 
be tried; to be ever dying into life. Even 
the knowing of ourselves, as we are, must 
fill us with penitential sorrow, and make it 
blessed to mourn. 

Now if we consider it is the end of the 
Divine dealings with us that we may know 
ourselves and our errors, and find our only 
help and remedy, there is ground in them 



52 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

for our continual rejoicing. Our tribulation 
truly leads to patience, our patience to ex- 
perience, and our experience to hope — the 
progressive steps of joy. If we loved God 
as he is worthy to be loved, that joy would 
be unspeakable and full of glory. 

Let me not be supposed to be unmindful 
of our infirmities and sins, as preventing 
our attaining the comfort provided for the 
Christian. Let me not conceal either that 
the grace which refines and heightens his 
sense of joy, also develops and sharpens his 
sensibility to sorrow. Like other men he 
has natural affections and tastes; he has 
hopes and objects of life which are dear 
to him, and in which he may be wounded 
and cast down. Causes exist around him 
and in him, any one of which may plunge 
him into the deepest distress. Sickness, or 
a pain of his body may affect his soul, and 
throw a sadness over every aspect of life. 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 53 

It is the privilege of his sanctity not to feel 
the desolation of his affections less than 
others, but to be provided with support and 
consolation under them. To show whence 
these are derived, to sow light in his path, 
not that he may feel or grieve less in a 
godly Avay, but be more consoled therein, 
is the only just office of Christian sympathy. 
Nothing is so well adapted to effect this 
as a consideration of the Avork and offices 
of Christ. We are guilty, and He has 
atoned for our guilt ; we are without right- 
eousness, and He offers us his own spotless 
and perfect as it is ; we are weak, and it is 
in weakness his strength is perfected ; we 
are in bondage to the fear of death, and by 
dying for us He has drawn the sting of 
death, and spoiled him v/ho had the power 
of it. With hearts then assured of an in- 
terest in Him, and in his intercession, what 
trouble or what change can be too great for 
6 



54 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

US to go through, leaning on the arm of our 
beloved? To whom can we go in our 
distress but unto Him? He has all power, 
and his compassion moves towards us, un- 
merited and unasked. Our guilt if it be 
owned, our bereavements and our low es- 
tate if they be rightly borne, commend us 
to his regard. The raven's cry, the slightest 
distress of sentient being, escapes not his 
notice, and surely the souls He has re- 
deemed and made to understand and return 
his love, can never be burdened without 
his sympathy ; their cries can never go up 
to Him in vain. To them his ear is ever 
open ; for them He ever pleads ; and they 
shall never seek his face in vain. How 
strong is the encouragement we have to be 
^- ever looking unto Him'' out of our afflic- 
tions ? Can we ever forget Him, and what 
He has borne for us ? Can we ever cease 
to love Him who hath so loved us ? Can 



SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 55 

our sorrows ever fail to turn us to Him in 
prayer^ since they turn Him to us in com- 
passion ? The prayer of the contrite heart 
will ever bring down from Him all needed 
support. When we pray in the Spirit of 
Christ, interceding for us, and his worth 
presents and hallows the prayer, how shall 
we not be heard, not feel his sympathy 
moving on our affections, and transforming 
us into something of his image and bles- 
sedness ? 



56 USES OF ADVERSITY. 



CHAPTER IV. 

DIVINE PROVIDENCE. MEANS OF FINDING 

ITS DIRECTION. — BENEFITS OF OBSERVING 

IT. MODES AND COMFORTS OF RELYING 

UPON IT. 

The intercession of Christ may naturally- 
lead us to consider his providential govern- 
ment over us. As in the one he is ever 
our memorial before God, so in the other 
does he observe and order all events that 
may affect us. There is rich comfort and 
instruction in this truth. It is a truth of 
the greatest practical moment, and yet it is 
to be feared, it is not generally so esteemed. 

When we survey the immensity of space, 
and by artificial aids to our sight the spar- 
kles of unnumbered worlds emerge into 
view, too remote from us for any computa- 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 57 

tion of science, and consider it is but a mere 
glimpse which we have of the suburbs and 
outposts of creation, we are forced to beheve 
that God must be in the midst to uphold 
and regulate the whole ; but we are very- 
apt to be unmindful of his hand in the little 
events of life. How the Hand which holds 
all worlds, should give to every bird its in- 
stinct and plumage, every flower its colour 
and fragrance, and every particle of matter 
its place and office ; how the same Mind 
that orders the motions of planets, and 
controls the destinies of empires, does yet 
as certainly number all the hairs of our 
heads, and note all the thoughts of our 
hearts, and the motives and courses of 
them, is something which we may admire, 
yea, must believe as fully revealed to us, 
and yet how rarely does it affect and con- 
sole us as a reality. 

Great events, astounding disasters, im- 



5b USES OF ADVERSITY. 

press us with the truth of a Divine Provi- 
dence, but a providence in all things, in 
the smallest as truly as in the greatest 
occurrences, is the doctrine fitted to be the 
soul's rest. God works not alone in our 
great affairs, but whatsoever happens to 
us proceeds from his appointment. It is 
by looking at His hand in the common 
events of life, that we acquire the habit of 
depending upon Him, and of feeling that 
He is indeed always at our side. If we 
carry this doctrine into life, rest on its 
truth, and look for its evidence in the little 
troubles and difficulties, the little benefits 
and enjoyments of each day, we shall be- 
come convinced that God is ever busied 
Avith our guidance, and we shall find a 
comfort in this conviction that will be more 
than a match for the fruits of every other 
dependence. We shall learn to feel that 
he is ever about our path, and about our 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 59 

bed, watching our every step and noting 
our every want, as one v/ho has the full 
charge and care of us. As God speaks 
not to us with his voice, this is the only 
way we can attend to Him, silently working 
for us — the only way we can learn His will, 
carefully minding his working. If then we 
would have his guidance, which is always 
our safety and comfort, we must be ever 
tracing His hand in the minutest events, for 
as it is in every thing He works, we shal 
lose the line of his direction without a 
continual observance, and losing that, we 
must go wrong and oblige Him in some 
sort to enforce our attention by dispensing 
to us afflictive or startling events. If we 
will not see Him in little things, in the 
stirring, as it were, of leaves ; if we catch 
not the glances of his eye and gather not 
thence his directions to us, and He be 
pledged or willed to move us to any good, 



60 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

He will lay on us a heavier hand, will 
correct us with his rod till we know it is 
He and not another who is dealing with 
us. We are told that when we depart 
from his counsel He will correct us; His 
love, his care, his charging Himself with 
our keeping, obliges Him to do it, and if 
we will not eye Him in his providence 
and take his gentlest directions, the softest 
intimations of his will, what can we expect 
but that He will come out and speak as 
one having authority. 

A dutiful child sees in the little glances 
and changes of a parent's eye the clear 
expression of his will, and well pleases him 
indeed, when following such guidance he 
needs no words of authority to secure his 
attention 5 yea, the loving child will watch 
his countenance and discern therein his 
wishes before they are expressed, as eager 
to save him the trouble of speaking, and 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 61 

should we take the guidance of the eye 
of God and seek to discern in the Httlest 
events the indications of His nearness to 
us, the beckoning of His hand, the expres- 
sions of his countenance towards us, we 
shall well please Him ; we shall show the 
reverence to which He is so justly entitled 
from us, and save ourselves, it may be, 
from those severe corrections which are as 
the clear accents of his voice. 

We cannot tell how many of our plans 
fail, or how many succeed for want of his 
direction; we only know his guidance is 
ever safe and best. We see often our good 
comes out of our disappointment, and that 
our ruin lay in the way of our choice. 
We are tried, our affections are w^ounded, 
the bright hopes of our youth reach not 
their objects, our kindUng aspirations after 
improvement brings us not the needed 
good, and the review of life shows us that 



62 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

little has happened to us according to our 
designs from time to time. We have not 
wisdom to discern the dangers that lay in 
our path, or to appreciate why we pros- 
pered in this and failed in that, but we see 
if we had succeeded in some things it 
would have been our misfortune. We see 
the weak and ignorant sometimes outstrip 
the strong and wise in their designs ; we 
see preferences and successes and results 
every where which baffle all the rules of 
human calculation and show " there is a 
Providence which shapes our ends.'^ 

The events of Providence which we call 
mysterious are only so as differing from 
what we in our ignorance would do or 
expect. The good and useful are cut 
down, while the evil and unprofitable are 
spared. The single, the apparently inju- 
rious, who care for none and for whom 
no one cares, live on to old age, while 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 63 

the son who is as the stafl' in the hands of 
his parents is suddenly taken away; the 
husband of the wife who looks to him as 
her protector and guide, and finds in him 
the prompter of her virtues, and in his love 
the sweetening of her duties, is removed as 
at noonday : or the widow whose heart is 
garnered up in her only son, just as she 
begins to lean upon him, is compelled to 
see him carried out to the grave. 

We are troubled in heart at things like 
these, but why should we be troubled 
while Ave so imperfectly comprehend them. 
God thus confounds our wisdom and shows 
what light esteem He has of our momen- 
tary interests here. Our lives are as min- 
utes, and our great affairs as trifles, com- 
pared with the duration and value of what 
He has in store. When we can see, as He 
does, the end from the beginning, and tell 
all the relations between time and eternity, 



64 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

this evil will turn to good, this darkness 
to light, and this confusion to order. At 
best, we see not but we must be unsettled 
in mind, and filled with dismay by events 
which are perpetually occurring about us, 
if we are not stayed and comforted by 
considering them as the wise and just 
ordering of his hand. 

If we are humble in our ignorance, and 
confiding in our devotion, if we submit 
ourselves to his discipline as not knowing 
what is best, and as not wishing to choose 
for ourselves ; as satisfied that He who 
has all power and knows all things will 
order all wisely, He will give us proofs of 
the wisdom of our trust ; the secret of ike 
Lord will become ours : we shall feel He 

" Sees all as if that all were one ; 
Loves one as if that one were all ;" 

and it will not be more our blessedness 
than our conviction that 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 65 

"God nothing does nor suffers to be done, 
But we would do ourselves if we could see 
The end of all he does as well as he." 

It is manifest that sach a view of Divine 
Providence must yield great support and 
consolation under affliction. It is alike our 
privilege and duty to cherish it, to rest in 
it as in the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land. The sanctifying influence of 
such a view upon our hearts, if it be 
habitual, will be very great. It sets God 
constantly before the mind, and teaches us 
to merge our pleasures in his will. It 
checks our proneness to walk in the sight 
of our own eyes, abases our self-confi- 
dence, and prepares us to be profitably 
blessed. I know nothing better adapted 
to break the force of our wills, to subdue 
the worldliness which we so naturally 
acquire from the world, than the habit of 
eyeing and owning God in his own Provi- 
7 



QQ USES OF ADVERSITY. 

dence. I see not how we are to be pre- 
served from the chilling influence of the 
world, unless we regard it as the theatre 
of Divine operations, and all events as 
revealing to us the hand of God. Not to 
view it thus is practical atheism, a living 
without God as to all use of his guidance 
and all sense of dependence upon Him. 
When you see a person of tender and 
sacred regard to a Providence, watching 
its manifestations, and dehghting to follow 
its leadings, you see a happy christian 
whose path is illumined and shineth more 
and more. This is the way to keep God 
in mind, to depend on Him, and to find 
liis direction, for in this respect he will be 
sought ofler. 

Our adversities and miscarriages spring 
not from the ground, and it is for want of 
seeing his majesty and wisdom in them that 
they fret and chafe us so. Because we 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 67 

look at them more as caused by ourselves 
or others, and see God less in them, we 
are more ready to complain of them. If 
we saw other agents less and God more in 
his dispensations, we should not so often 
lose the lessons they are designed to teach. 
A mindfulness of God in his providence 
would also check our presumption and 
preserve us from many rash undertakings 
which end in disaster. Nothing that He 
chooses not for us can in any just sense be 
regarded as good; and if we will not seek 
his direction, will not notice or take it when 
given, even our successes may be any thing 
than blessings. 

But it is not a blind, an unthinking or 
unacting dependence which is required of 
us. ^^To make,^' says Dr. South, "our 
reliance upon Providence both pious and 
rational, we should in every great enter- 
prise we take in hand, prepare all things 



G3 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

with that care, diligence, and activity as if 
there were no such thing as Providence for 
us to depend on ; and again when w« have 
done all this, we should as wholly and 
humbly depend upon it, as if we had made 
no preparations at all. And this is a rule 
of practice which will never fail or shame 
any who shall venture their all upon it.'^ 
Such a practice makes us in a sort co- 
workers with God in executing all the 
plans of life, and is not this the best pledge 
of their safety and success ? If our plans 
thus fail it is not as some count failing ; it 
is succeeding by what seems our failing. 
That which we enter upon with due effort 
and due trust in God ; that which we 
ardently desire in subordination to his will 
and gain not, is withheld as likely to harm 
us, or for the purpose of effecting for us 
some greater good in its place. And though 
it may be difficult for us to conform to it 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 69 

as a rule of life, yet are we bound to infer 
it from the promises and goodness of God. 
It is not always that we can see our disap- 
pointments to be best for us, and if we 
could, there would not be a sufficient trial 
of our faith, but we can see it, if we give 
heed, in so many instances, as greatly to 
encourage our faith it must be so in all. 

Alas, that we should be so prone to dis- 
trust the care and provisions of Providence ! 
We indulge fears for our health, for the 
continuance of our life, for the supply of 
our wants ; we are anxious and perplexed 
for the success of our plans, and the event 
of our business, much as if we could de- 
pend only on ourselves. And yet if we 
will carefully review life we shall find thai 
in most cases where our fears were greatest, 
we experienced less difficulty and disaster 
than we expected. We shall find that our 
troubles have come greatly short of our 



70 USES OF ADVERSlTiT. 

fears, and that in passing through the se- 
verest trials unlocked for support has been 
given us. So common is the feeling of 
distrust on this subject that I think this 
must be the experience of all. Most of 
the trials of life s^em great and difficult 
to be borne in prospect; their approach 
disconcerts and alarms us as if we st6od 
alone without strength or provision to pass 
through them. This shows that we are 
living greatly below our privilege and duty. 
It shows that a great fault, a great misery 
of our condition is a want of trust in Pro- 
vidence. 

The ways in which we are provided for 
are numberless, and for the most part un- 
seen by us. God sometimes disposes the 
hearts of others to encourage and relieve 
us, or He directs our efforts, and brings aid 
from quarters which promised little, or He 
strengthens our heart to bear and profit 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE, 71 

by the crosses and events He dispenses 
to us. 

If we will but eye Providence in our own 
case, and look to it for support, we shall 
not only feel its stay, but have occasion for 
admiration and praise at what is wrought 
for us. Our disappointments as well as 
our successes will be just subjects of grate- 
ful recollection; and perhaps the former 
rather than the latter will call for our high- 
est praise. We shall certainly see cause 
for unceasing gratitude that we have not 
always succeeded in our desires, and gain 
perhaps the true felicity of feeling that we 
are not so wise that we can safely appoint 
any thing for ourselves. Our blessedness is 
not to choose, but to know that God chooses 
all things for us. 

"It is not in man'that walketh to direct 
his steps.^' Every agent in society, every 
element in nature, and even the angels of 



72 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

God are charged with some office affecting 
us. The connexions we form, our pros- 
perity and adversity, and every circum- 
stance relating to our condition are of the 
Divine choosing. It must be so, and if it 
were not, we could never be conducted 
safely through such a world as this. None 
but God, having control of every influence 
affecting us, and adapting every thing with 
foresight of what we are and what we 
need, could secure our spiritual advance- 
ment, and bring us at last to glory. How 
suitable then that we should commit to 
Him the choosing of all things for us, and 
if we can feel that we have done so, how 
sweet will be the consciousness that the 
sorrows of our condition are parts of the 
discipline which his wisdom assigns us. 
They may be difficult to bear; we may 
not see the end or direction of them now, 
but when that which is in part shall be 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 73 

done away, and we retrace them in the 
unerring light of eternity, they will appear 
to have tended to great and glorious issues, 
and be among the most grateful reminis- 
cences of the past. 

But let me not dismiss this subject without 
asking you, Christian reader, to pause and 
consider whether you areliving in a practical 
dependence on Divine Providence ? Are you 
deriving from your dependence the comforts 
it may impart? We have been considering 
the intercession and sympathy of Christ, and 
He is the God of providence. All your steps, 
if you are His, are ordered by Him, ordered 
with all the care and tenderness with which 
He sought you out and brought you to the 
faith and love of Him. He has left words of 
sympathy and comfort for you in every trial 
You have no worldly difficulties which he 
has not been through before you. He is the 
good Shepherd who calls you to walk only 



74 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

in the paths he has trod first. How consol- 
ing the thought that He, who has died for 
you and feels for you as redeemed by His 
blood, governs the world, and dispenses all 
events! Are you tempted or persecuted 
from the world, His loving voice is, "Be of 
good cheer, I have overcome the world.'^ 
Are you in want, that voice is," Behold the 
fowls of the air, they sow not, nor reap, nor 
gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father 
feedeth them. Are you not much better than 
they ? I too was poor, homeless and friend- 
less, I had not even where to lay my head.^^ 
Are you in perplexity^what you shall do, 
whether this or that, the same voice is, 
" Commit thy way unto me, and I will bring 
it to pass. Call upon me in the day of trou- 
ble and 1 will deliver.^^ Are you filled with 
foreboding of coming distress, the same dear 
voice is, " Let not your heart be troubled ; 
ye believe in God, believe also in me; in 



•■i^ 



PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 75 

confidence shall be your strength ; my grace 
shall be sufficient for you/^ Are you struck 
down with grief, has death taken from you 
the best beloved of earth, this is a great 
desolation you feel ! How unspeakably dear 
is that friend you can see no more ? How 
precious now that sympathy and love no 
more to be yours ! But do not refuse to be 
comforted by the tears of Jesus. See Him 
weep at the grave of buried friendship. See 
his tears starting with the tears of surviving: 
mourners. 0, my friend, do not grieve over 
much lest you should move to greater dis- 
tress the tender heart of Jesus. He must 
partake of a sorrow like yours. He dearly 
looks towards you as though beseeching 
you to submit sweetly to this loss, and say- 
ing, " I have died that I might draw the 
sting of death, and dispel the gloom of the 
grave. I have done what I could to pre- 
pare you for the great necessity. It is the 



76 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

way you and yours must go in coming to 
me. I know what it is ; I have tasted 
death for you, and I taste it ever when you 
or yours die.'^ 

Thus does Jesus teach us to know and 
use his sj^mpathy for our consolation ; thus 
does he care for us and attemper all influ- 
ences of his word and providence for the 
sweeter and safer conducting us through the 
world. 



VICTORIES OF LOVE. 



CHAPTER V. 

LOVE THE SOLVENT OF GRIEF.— ITS COM- 
PENSATING POWER ILLUSTRATED IN REAL 

LIFE. ITS ATTRIBUTES. ITS RESOURCES. 

ITS ASSIMILATING POWER. ITS VIC- 
TORIES AND JOYS. 

So far as we have proceeded, we must be 
struck with the expense, the variety and 
aptness of the Divine provisions for our con- 
solation under the griefs and trials of hfe. 
They all indicate the constant care of God 
for us, his exact and sympathising acquaint- 
ance with our frames, and his governing the 
world for the reduction of the evil and misery 
which sin has brought into it. Now that 
Christ has died and mercy can be extended 
to us without detriment to justice, God is so 
benignant, so condescending in all his deal- 
8 



78 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

ings as justly to invite the confidence and 
love of all rational creatures ; nor should the 
guilt and conscious demerit of, any deter 
them from coming to Him, since they deter 
not the proffers of his regard. He looks not 
Avith complacency on their ill doing, yet does 
he look complacently on the event of their 
turning to Him. All his dispensations, all 
the sorrows and trials of life and their natu- 
ral working, when not prevented by us, 
illustrate this cheering truth. We may ob- 
scure it by our theories and reasonings ; we 
may cover it up with a darkness of our 
own, yet I would hold it up as a glass 
which seems to concentrate all the rays of 
light that come to us — as the great resulting 
truth of all that is known or to be known 
of God. 

Nor should it be forgotten that we are 
never dealt with according to our deserts. 
We are invited to Him by our severest trials, 



I 



VICTORIES OF LOVE. 79 

yea, by our greatest losses we are invited to 
accept of what is better. Nor is there any 
indifference to what we suffer as creatures 
in making the exchange. Every way and 
every how is he kindly and sweetly disposed 
towards us in Christ Jesus. So affecting is 
the proof of this, that that must be the loss of 
all thiiigs indeed to which we are exposed, 
and a most needless loss on our part, if with 
all his care and readiness to save, and his 
agency for us, we become not co-workers 
with Him in this the cherished work of 
God. 

He would have us love Him according to 
the worthiness there is in Him, and this is 
the end of all his dealings with us. This too 
is the mildest condition of a free and ration- 
al creature^s blessedness. Think of it. Could 
you love Him less without injustice to your 
nature ? You are free to love, but you are 
bound to love wisely. If you love that best 



80 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

which is not best, can your nature improve 
as it might ? Must not the end be the loss 
of something which might and ought to have 
been yours ? If you love that which is not 
only not best but evil, must you not descend 
to it, and if you are destined to live on in 
this descending line, what will the disaster 
be at last ? Loving that most which is most 
worthy to be loved, you are happy, you 
answer the demands of your moral nature, 
you escape the harm which inferior affec- 
tions are apt to work, and you are ever as- 
cending and assimilating to something high- 
er and better than yourself. How reasonable 
then that we should love God, who is so 
worthy to be loved, that the best things we 
can love else are but distant and shadowy 
resemblances of Him, which we are indeed 
permitted to love because they are resem- 
blances, and as such, give us some taste of 
what He is, and sweeten the duty we owe 
to Him ! 



VICTORIES OF LOvE. 8l 

Love is represented as the fulfilling of 
the law — a creature's'perfection. All other 
graces, all Divine dispensations contribute 
to this, and are lost in it as in a heaven. It 
expels the dross of our nature ; it overcomes 
sorrow ; it is the full joy of our Lord. 

Let us contemplate its capacities and re- 
sources as applied to the experience of life. 
Property and business may fail, and still the 
eye of hope may fix itself on other objects 
and confidence may strengthen itself in 
other schemes, but when death enters into 
our family and loved ones are missing from 
our sight, though God may have made their 
bed in sickness, and established their hope in 
death, nothing can then relieve us but trust 
and love. Philosophy and pleasure do but 
intrude upon and aggravate our grief But 
love, the light of God, may chase away the 
gloom of this hour, and start up in the soul 
trusts, which give the victory over ourselves. 
8* 



82 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

The harp of the spirit though its cords be 
torn, never yields such sweet notes, such 
swelUng harmony, as when the world can 
draw no music from it. How often do we 
see strokes fall on the heart, which it would 
be but mockery for man to attempt to re- 
lieve, and which yet served to unlock the 
treasures of that heart and reveal a sweet- 
ness to it, which it had not knowi^i before. 
See that mother. She loves and mourns as 
none but a mother can. Behold the great- 
ness and the sweetness of her grief! Her 
child is dead, and she says " it is well with 
me, and it is well with my child. It is well 
because God has taken him ; He has said 
^ of such is the kingdom of heaven,' that he 
doth not willingly afflict, and I know it 
must be well.'' Can there be any greatness 
greater than this? Did ever any prince at 
the head of invincible armies win a victory 
like it ? Her heart is in heaviness and her 



VICTORIES OF LOVE. 88 

home is desolated, but she has been to her 
heavenly Father and unbosomed her griefs 
before him. There is peace on her sadden- 
ed countenance, peace in her gentle words, 
the peace of God has come down and is 
filling her trusting soul. How sweet and 
soft is her sorrow, and how it softens and 
awes without agitating others ! 

We have heard of sick persons whose pains 
came upon them at certain periods with 
overwhelming force, who said it was then 
they felt the greatest comfort. Their whole 
soul was so concentrated in love and trust 
in God, that suffering could not rise '^ above 
what they were able to bear,'' but seemed 
itself borne away in the overflowing of their 
own love. We cannot conceive, much less 
can we describe the sufficiency of the love 
God shed abroad in the heart, to drown the 
sense of grief. 

It is related that on a small, and rocky, 



84 USES OF ABVERSITY. 

and almost inaccessible island, is the resi- 
dence of a poor widow. The passage of the 
place is exceedingly dangerous to vessels, 
and her cottage is called the " Lighthouse/' 
from the fact that she uniformly keeps a 
lamp burning in her little window at night. 
Early and late she may be seen trimming 
her lamp with oil, lest some misguided bark 
may perish through her neglect. For this 
she asks no reward. But her kindness stops 
not here. When any vessel is wrecked, she 
rests not till the chilled mariners come ashore 
to share her little board, and be warmed by 
her glowing fire. This poor woman in her 
younger, perhaps not happier days, though 
happy they must have been, for sorrow can- 
not lodge in such a heart, witnessed her hus- 
band struggling with the waves and swal- 
lowed up by the remorseless billows, 
"In sight of home and friends who thronged to save." 

This directed her benevolence towards 



. 



VICTORIES OF LOVE. 85 

those who brave the dangers of the deep ; 
this prompted her present devoted and soli- 
tary life, in which her only, her sufficient 
enjoyment is in doing good. Sweet and 
blessed fruit of bereavement ! What beauty 
is here ! a loveliness I would little vspeak of, 
but more revere ! a flower crushed indeed, 
yet sending forth its fragrance to all around ! 
Truly, as the sun seems greatest in his low- 
est estate, so did sorrow enlarge her heart and 
make her appear the more noble, the lower 
it brought her down. We cannot think she 
was unhappy, though there was a remem- 
bered grief in her heart. A grieved heart 
may be a richly stored one. Where charity 
abounds, misery cannot. 

*« Such are the lender woes of love, 
Fost'ring the heart, they bend." 

It is a common remark that riches con- 
tract the heart, and the poor are too apt 
to think so, not considering the many and 



86 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

nameless advantages they receive directly 
or indirectly from the rich. If the heart be 
right the more we acquire the more freely 
shall we give. The disposition which 
would hoard millions, would also hoard 
pennies, and doat on them as treasures. A 
liberal heart will have a liberal hand, be it 
full or empty. The most beautiful exam- 
ples of charitable living are found alike 
among the rich and the poor. None are 
so low or so destitute but that they may 
equal the princes of the earth in charity. 
Their mites may even outstrip in their 
beauty and reward, the largest bestowings 
of the wealthy. If riches make us proud 
and forgetful of our ill-deservings, they will 
harden the heart, but if they be received as 
the largesses of heaven, and our unworthi- 
ness be deeply tasted in them, we shall 
delight to use them for the good of others. 
This principle is equally applicable to all the 



1 



VICTORIES OF LOVE. 87 

changes of our condition. Things harm us, 
not that there is any harm in them, but that 
we abuse them. As we acquire importance 
of any kind, we are prone to think more of 
ourselves, and thus lose the virtues which 
solaced our former state, and enabled us to 
rise above it. Both the ill and the good 
effects of an improved condition are often 
seen. 

An Irish schoolmaster, who, whilst poor 
himself, had given gratuitous instruction to 
certain poor children, when increased in 
worldly goods, began to complain of the 
service, and said to his wife, he could not 
afford to give it any longer for nothing, — 
who replied : " ! James, don't say the 
like o' that — don't ; a poor scholar never 
came into the house that I did'nt feel as if 
he brought fresh air from heaven ivith 
him — never miss the bit I gave them — my 
heart warms to the soft, homely sound of 



88 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

their bare feet on the floor, and the door 
almost opens of itself to let them in.'' 

A sentiment so beautiful could not fail to 
express itself beautifully. The prosperity 
which contracted his heart, enlarged hers. 
Her love was moved and beautified by it ; 
it turned her serving into joy ; 

" As the great sun, when he his influence 

Sheds on the frost-bound waters. — The glad stream 

Flows to the ray, and warbles as it flows." 

In her gentle reproving and her gentler 
spirit well does she answer the descrip- 
tion, — 

"A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command ; 
And yet a spirit, still, and bright, 
With something of an angel light." 

Nothing seems so to welcome the duties 
of life as humility, and nothing seems so to 
ennoble, as nothing so befits the human 
spirit. 



VICTORIES OF LOVE. 89 

"The bird that sings on highest wing 

Builds on the ground her lowly nest, 
And she that doth most sweetly sing, 
Sings in the shade when all things rest; 
In lark and nightingale we see 
What honour hath humility." 

A pious lady who had lost her husband, 
was for a time inconsolable. She could 
not think, scarcely could she speak of any 
thing but him. Nothing seemed to take 
her attention but the three promising chil- 
dren he had left her, imaging to her his 
presence, his look, his love. But soon these 
were all taken ill and died within a few days 
of each other, and now the childless mother 
was calmed even by the greatness of the 
stroke. The hand of God was thus made 
visible to her. She could see nothing but 
his work in the dispensation. Thus was 
the passion of her grief allayed. Her in- 
disposition to speak of her loss, her solemn 
9 



90 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

repose, was the admiration of all beholders. 
The Lord had not slain her ; he had slain 
what to some mothers is more than life, 
that in which the sweets of Hfe were trea- 
sured up, that which she would give life 
to redeem, and yet could she say, " I will 
trust in Him.'' As the lead that goes 
quickly down to the ocean's depth, ruffles 
its surface less than lighter things, so the 
blow which was strongest, did not so much 
disturb her calm of mind, but drove her 
to its proper trust. 

We had a friend loved and lovely. He 
had genius and learning. He had all 
qualities, great and small, blending in a 
most attractive whole — a character as 
much to be loved as admired, as truly 
gentle as it was great, and so combining 
opposite excellencies that each was beau- 
tified by the other. Between him and 
her who survives him there was a reel- 



' VICTORIES OF LOVE. 91 

procity of taste and sympathy — a living in 
each Other, so that her thoughts seemed 
but the pictures of his — her mind but a 
glass that showed the very beauty that 
looked into it, or rather became itself that 
beauty. Dying in his dying, she did not 
all die. Her love, the hearths animation, 
lifted her up ; her sense of loss was merged 
for a while in her love and confidence of 
his good estate. In strong and trusting 
thoughts of him as a happy spirit, and of 
God as his and her portion, she rested as in 
a cloud. A falling from this elevation, 
was truly a coming to one's self from God 
— a leaving of heaven for earth. Let her 
tell the rest in words as beautiful as they 
are true to nature. " My desolating loss 
I realize more and more. For many 
weeks his peaceful and triumphant de- 
parture left such an elevating influence on 
my mind, that I could only think of him 



92 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

as a pure and happy spirit. But now my 
feelings have become more selfish, and I 
long for the period to arrive, when I may 
lie down by his side and be re-united in a 
nobler and more enduring union than even 
that which was ours here.'' 

Thus does the mind when it ceases to 
look upward, fall from its elevation. Thus 
is the low note of sadness heard running 
through all the music of life, when our- 
selves are the instruments we play upon. 
The sorrow that deepens not love, and runs 
not off with it, must ever flood the spirit 
and bear it down. Our best and sweetest 
life, that which we live in the good of 
others, is richly stocked with charities. 
The life which we live in ourselves, that 
which depends on our stores, is master only 
of chaff and smoke, when they are taken 
away, and destitute of that last relieving 
accommodation, a resigned spirit. The 



VICTORIES OF LOVE. 93 

young man whom Jesus told to sell all his 
goods and give to the poor^ and he should 
have treasure in heaven, should be truly- 
enriched — " was sad at that saying.'^ He 
understood not the riches of love, which 
never feels itself so wealthy, as when it 
has expended all in obedience to the com- 
mands it honours ; never so well furnished 
against want and sorrow, as when best 
assured of the approbation of its object. 
In that we are creatures, we see how poor 
we must be, having nothing laid up in the 
Creator. Selfishness is poverty; it is the 
most utter destitution of a human being. 
It can bring nothing to his relief; it adds 
soreness to his sorrows ; it sharpens his 
pains ; it aggravates all the losses he is 
liable to endure, and when goaded to ex- 
tremes, often turns destroyer and strikes its 
last blows on himself. It gives us nothing 
to rest in or to fly to, in trouble ; it turns 
9* 



94 USES OP ADVERSITY. 

our affections on ourselves, self on self, as 
the sap of a tree descending out of season 
from its heavenward branches, and making 
not only its life useless, but its growth 
downward. 

If there is any thing about us which good 
hearts will reverence, it is our grief on the 
loss of those we love. It is a condition in 
which we seem to be smitten by a Divine 
hand, and thus made sacred. It is a grief 
too, which greatly enriches the heart, when 
rightly borne. There may be no rebellion 
of the will, the sweetest sentiments towards 
God and our fellow beings, may be deep- 
ened, and still the desolation caused in the 
treasured sympathies and hopes of the 
heart, gives a new colour to the entire 
scene of life. The dear affections A^^hich 
grew out of the consanguinities and con- 
nexions of life, next to those we owe to 
God, are the most sacred of our being; 
and if the hopes and revelations of a future 



VICTORIES OP LOVE. 95 

state, did not come to our aid, our grief 
would be immoderate and inconsolable, 
when these relations are broken by death. 
But we are not left to sorrow in darkness. 
Death is as the foreshadowing of life. We 
die that we may die no more. So short 
too is our life here, a mortal life at best, 
and so endless is the life on which we enter 
at death, an immortal life, that the con- 
sideration may well moderate our sorrow 
at parting. All who live must be separat- 
ed by the great appointment, and if the 
change is their gain, we poorly commend 
our love to them, more poorly our love to 
Christ, who came to redeem them and us, 
for the end of taking us to his rest, if we 
refuse to be comforted. Yes, it is selfish 
to dwell on our griefs as though some 
strange thing had happened to us, as 
though they were too important to be reliev- 
ed, or it were a virtue to sink under them. 
I would revere all grief of this kind, yet 



96 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

I would say there is such a thing as a will 
of cherishing it, which makes it rather 
killing than improving in its effect. This 
may be done under a conceit of duty or 
gratitude to the dead. It may be done as a 
sacrifice to what we deem is expected of us, 
or as a thing becoming in the eyes of others. 
But that bereavement seems rather sancti- 
fied which saddens not the heart over much, 
and softens without withering it; which 
refuses no comfort or improvement we can 
profitably receive, and imposes no restraints 
on the rising hopes of the heart ; which, in 
short, gives way and is lost in an over- 
growth of kind and grateful affections. 

If the morning of life has a mantle of grey, 

Its noon will be blither and brighter, 
If March has its storm, there is sunshine in May, 

And light out of darkness is lighter : 
Thus the present is pleasant, a cheerful to-day, 

With a wiser, a soberer gladness. 
Because it is tinged with the mellowing ray 

Of a yesterday's sunset of sadness. 

TUPPER. 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 97 



CHAPTER VI. 

CAPACITIES OF LOVE. THE BEAUTY AND 

STRENGTH OF ITS WORKING, 

I HAVE introduced these examples from 
life to give a practical insight of the sweet 
working of the affections within us. If we 
could so die to self that every passion and 
desire should be subordinate to love, it 
would be our exemption from most of the 
evils we complain of; it would at least 
deliver us from that impatience which 
sharpens and magnifies them. 

I cannot properly set forth, I cannot ex- 
tol as I would this capacity of our nature 
for overcoming evil and gaining to itself 
every good. And when I consider it [is the 



93 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

design and manifest working of all our 
painful experience to purify and strengthen 
this as the pure element of heaven within 
us, I know not how to speak of the beauty 
and resources of that goodness which work- 
eth in us a passion in which we not only 
resemble perfection, but may go on to 
possess it. There are Hmits to our advance- 
ment in every thing but love. Whatever 
else we can possess or know is no protec- 
tion against sorrow and despair, but this 
sheds a light and a cheering about the 
heart, v/hich no calamity can expel. Out 
of the greatest distresses it comes a victor, 
laden with the spoils of every foe. From 
the dust our bed, and the flesh our prison, 
it enables us to rise and soar as in a heaven 
of our own. Other joys are like meteors 
in the night, like flashes of lightning which 
only serve to reveal the darkness, but this 
forms a part of ourselves, mingles with the 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 99 

whole tissue of our life, and works in us a 
stock of enjoyments which can never fail. 
It drives us out of ourselves, and sets us 
roaming the universe to make it ours in 
thought, to gather from it the sweets on 
which it thrives. 

Selfishness or worldly sorrowing drives 
us back and shuts us up within ourselves. 
Confiding, disinterested love is a creating 
power, wanting in no expedients to serve 
our need. It is the spring of the intellect, 
the mind ever springing from good to better. 
If we hate, we deprive ourselves of some- 
thing of which love gives us the possession. 
It is an all-possessing principle. It finds in 
all things something to rejoice in. In for- 
giving it recovers what was lost ; in endur- 
ing it conquers ; in expending it increases ; 
in admiring it takes possession. Harmony, 
truth, beauty, excellence and the like, be- 
come ours through the loving perception of 



100 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

them, and love sharpens the mind's sight 
for them, or reveals them where without 
loving we should not see them. The seeing 
of what is lovely or excellent is, for the 
moment at least, a possession of these quali- 
ties, and seeing them with approbation and 
desire, prolongs their possession. Conscious- 
ness tells us so much as true. 

God in whom all that is great and lovely 
and pure in thought, in essence and in action, 
is revealed in his word, in forms to suit our 
sympathy and perceptions, and in his works 
as with ten thousand concording voices ; 
and if we are all ear and all mind to Him, 
what discoverers of truth, what proficients 
in excellence, what holders of happiness 
must we become ! Our thoughts can go 
and come, though all that may be seen and 
all that may be known, discovering what 
is worthy to be loved, and followed in their 
shining lead, yea, speeded therein by the 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 101 

joying, exulting recipients of their con- 
quests, — our heart's best affections. 

I have said the perception of any good 
quahty is in some sort our present posses- 
sion of it. If we see a lovely virtue we 
feel one and the same at the moment, and 
when as in God there is a confluence of all 
beauties and perfections, the meditation of 
Him, the study of what may be known of 
Him, will be a possessing ourselves of Him, 
through a love, sweetening his words to our 
taste, bathing us in his perfection, and 
clothing us with his beams, till we become 
^•' light in the Lord,'' and have in us no 
darkness at all, as heaven has no need of 
the sun for the lustre of the purity that is 
gathered therein. 

What a resource then is here against the 
griefs and disasters of life ? They may be 
very strong, they may bear down the stout- 
est hearts, yet love is strong enough to take 
10 



102 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

them up and bear them as a '' very little 
thing.'^ There is no weakness, no poverty 
in love. Its sources of strength are every 
where, and it rallies to them with the speed 
of thought. Its legions of reserve are at com- 
mand, and it comes up with force increased 
in proportion to the difficulty to be overcome, 
yea, gathers strength from conflict, brings 
sweetness out of the bitterest dregs, its 
honey from the lion's jaws — a Sampson^s 
honey indeed. 

How much good companionship, if it be 
a loving one, redeems us from what is low 
and evil, and elevates us to a worthy in- 
heritance of the qualities of our companion, 
is testified by the debasement wrought in 
us through evil companionship if it be 
chosen^ and by the price the wise will pay 
to escape it. We may compass the treasures 
of thought and feeling lodged in all books 
and make them ours by a kind of storing 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 103 

process, and not have the life, the feeling 
from which they spring, not gain the mas- 
tery, the power of producing the like, which 
the loving contact of the great imparts, the 
minding of the living inspires and makes 
ours through the appropriating affections, 
— the genial aspiring which ascends, not 
knowing it ascends, and drinks of inspira- 
tion, not knowing it is the effluence of spirit 
itself. 

You may have books to learn from, but 
give me the free converse of great and pure 
minds, and if I have any thing noble, any 
thing on which their vestal fire can catch, 
I shall burn and lose all my dross in the 
trial Give me the love of meditating on 
the good, the great ; the sight to find the 
true, the beautiful, the divine in every thing, 
and if I do not become wise as no learning 
can make me, it will be because seeing I 
do not see, because I think not and dis- 



104 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

cover not as a " living spirit/^ because 
" twice dead and plucked up by the roots/^ 
the contact, the infusion of life itself will not 
revive me. 

But if I may so improve by good com- 
munications ; if the port, the sensibility, the 
virtue of others may become mine, as I 
cannot tell how or why, save that I love 
them, am in them and they in me in a sort 
of mingled life, what may I not become 
when God, in whom all beauty, all that 
should be loved, has its original and per- 
fection, is the object on which my thoughts 
attend by day and by night ; when He 
deigns to dwell in me, as spirit only can 
dwell in spirit, richly by his fruits and 
virtues, perfecting his strength in the c6n- 
scious want of mine 5 when He calls and I 
hear, yea, speaks as with a brother's voice, 
and face to face in Jesus Christ, revealing 
Himself to my sympathies, my sight, my 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 106 

faith, as all in all ? Here is a companion- 
ship one would think sufficient to preserve 
us from the corruption of the world, to awe 
down the risings of evil within us, and 
rewarding our devotion with such strong 
consolation as should beguile us of the 
sense of sorrow, and overmaster all inferior 
attachments. 

If the return of our love be as our pos- 
session of its object, our admission to its 
presence, as the strength of two hearts, the 
mingling of two flames in one, then must 
our aff'ections lift themselves up to God 
with a perpetual aspiring, for He loves us 
with a love compared with which, the love 
of creatures with all its sweetness and its 
strength, is treasureless and cold — a love 
which would not only give Himself to us, 
but make us worthy of the gift. He is 
most unworthy of our regard who is not 
more ambitious to merit than to gain it ; he 
10* 



106 USES OP ADVERSITY. 

loves not nor can love, who seeks his own 
more than another's good, and does not 
sweetly sink himself to exalt his object, 
and here is a love that weighs not our de- 
servings, comes down to our poor estate, 
asks not any thing that we have, engages 
to make us worthy of itself, and gives us, 
even what it exacts, our love again. Won- 
derful love ! Itself both our teacher and 
our joy — enriching us when we have a 
sense that we are poor, as it is 6nly then 
we can enjoy gifts ; exalting us when we 
are humble, as it is only then we can profit 
by exaltation ; strengthen us when we know 
our weakness, as it is only then we will 
use his help ; returning to us when we will 
return to Him, as it is only then that He 
can bind us to our duty, — such is the love 
of God to us, giving us all the good that 
we may safely have, and making us the 
better for all He gives — our example and 
our blessedness forevermore ! 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 107 

Now, if his love towards us has so many 
aspects of beauty that there can be nothing 
beautiful which does not proceed therefrom, 
then our loving Him must make Him so 
beautiful as that we can see, can desire no 
other beauty, for He is love, and it is but 
Him we see in all that is worthy to be 
loved. If genuine love has power to trans- 
form the nature of the lover into the thing 
beloved, (and we know it has,) uniting and 
making him over through some secret and 
inward working, so that we are ever sink- 
ing down or rising to the quality of our 
objects, — the love of the world making us 
worldly, and the love of heaven making us 
heavenly, — then shall he who loves God, 

"Divine contemplate and become divine." 

Nor shall he want aids and encourage- 
ments in the process. His love is a fountain 
of joy and strength, and it has this excellent 



108 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

nature in it, that it gives a relish to every 
thing he does, sweetens his service, or rather 
is a sweetness in him that conies of serving, 
and makes serving sweet. And we see 
not that he can become weary, or his love 
cool so long as its object is in view, for it 
has the art of decking what it falls on with 
ever growing beauty, of making every 
thing seem greater and lovelier, which is 
seen through it, and yet sees all things 
through itself How then shall we not love 
Him, and feel his love giving us " songs in 
the night,'^ and enabling us to cry from the 
depths of affliction, ^^ Lord, let the beams 
of Thy Majesty so shine into my mind, that 
it may ever depend confidently on Thee. 
Let my faults by Thy hand be corrected. 
Let Thy will be done on me and in me to 
the joyful embracing of what sorrow Thou 
will have me endure. Let my enemies 
prevail against me and my pain be the 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 109 

sweetness of their revenge, if my calamity- 
be but the exercise of my virtue, and their 
wickedness turn me not from my trust and 
joy in Thee.'^ 

In noble natures, the source of tears at all 
times lies nearer the heart than that of joy, 
but when made nobler by the love of God, 
they often seem to covet affliction, to "glory 
in tribulation,'^ not merely as the profitable 
dispensing of his hand, but as in some sort 
a revenge on themselves, that they no more 
love Him, and are no more worthy of his 
love. Never does one appear so truly 
noble and happy as when most truly sub- 
jected to the will of God ; in nothing does 
he so rule as in the authority to which he 
submits — the sway of love in him, which 
the more complete it is, the less is his feel- 
ing of subjection. This is the liberty where- 
with Christ makes us free, and it is a liberty 
compared with which, all, that men call 



110 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

such, is slavery. The happiness that flows 
from it is like a spring of water, so pure it 
tastes of nothing but itself, so self-supporting 
that though imparting itself to all who 
come to it, it seems undiminished by all it 
spares. 

A love having so many excellent quali- 
ties and powers, commanding so many 
helps to its own growth, and working in 
us by sweet assimilation the blessedness 
to which it aspires, is surely our chiefest 
treasure. It is the affluence of the soul, 
the abounding fullness of every good, which 
is bringing us oS" from our sorrows and 
corruptions, and enabling us in some sort 
spiritually to dwell safely with ravenous 
beasts, to go through fires, to tread on ser- 
pents and scorpions unstung and unharmed. 

In all troubles and dangers let us then 
not forget the supports and defences that 
may be laid up in themselves. Our griefs 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. Ill 

are for the most part such as no external 
applications or advantages can reach or 
relieve. The sympathy of friends often 
raises the tide of sorrow, but never stays it. 
It is consoling to some minds to have the 
participation of others in their distress, but it 
is too apt to be a selfish relief which they 
thus gain. If a whole community should 
pause and take to sorrowing on their be- 
half, the danger is it would add to their 
self-love and consequence, cause them to 
put on the appearance of deepened grief as 
an outward propriety, but it could not touch 
the source of a single pang ; it could yield 
nothing worthy of the name of consolation. 
They rather act the wiser and nobler part, 
who seek not observation, who shun the 
participation of others in their grief, and 
when they see they have it, lose sight of 
their own in concern for what they are 
causing. This is the starting of a disin- 



112 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

terested love, carrying them out of them- 
selves; a breaking up of sorrow at its 
fountain, and the heart feels its gentle heal- 
ing at once. Our stronghold then is in our- 
selves I in'' the exercise of self-forgetful and 
consoling affection, lifting us up to God as 
the dispenser of our trials, and if we can 
feel He is "all our salvation and all our 
desire,'^ that will be our remedy, our victory 
over any calamity that may befall us. As 
great a good as He can make Himself to a 
creature, so great a good does our love of 
Him attain ; and surely, if all other good 
things are as nothing to Him, and are good 
only as they resemble Him, He can com- 
pensate us for any thing He may lay on us or 
take from us ; He can so communicate Him- 
self to us, so empower and draw out our 
love to Him, that we shall dwell in Him 
and He in us, shall lose our sense of pain, 
and all other things, their power of harming. 



LOVE OVERCOMING GRIEF. 113 

His love to us is so attested that it made an 
apostle resolve to know nothing else, to 
count all things but loss for the excellency 
of it in Christ Jesus. Let us too fix our 
eyes upon it, till our eyes affect our hearts ; 
till, as we are musing, the fire begins to 
burn. Let us meditate upon the amazing 
love of our dying Saviour, till, losing sight 
of our griefs in the greatness of his, endured 
for us, our souls are kindled with reciprocal 
flames wherein we may offer up ourselves, 
in turn, as living sacrifices to Him, and our 
hearts be rooted and grounded in love, and 
transported with the sweetness thereof, to 
the praise of the glory of his grace. Then 
shall our gloom retire as before the presence 
of light. Then shall there be no hardness, 
no destruction in our sorrow. Then shall 
smiles, sweeter than those of friends and 
lovers, be ever greeting our trusting eyes. 
Such are the properties and rewards of 
11 



Hi USES OF ADVERSITY. 

our love. It is a charity which receives its 
beauty and its merit from its object j which 
has its honour in its aims, and which, failins: 
of all else, has a rich stock of enjoyment in 
itself. Its object too, ever grows more beau- 
tiful and worthy to its view ; and like the 
bee, it is ever busy to carry to it the sweet- 
ness of all flowers and treasure it there. 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 115 



CHAPTER VII. 

DIVINE GOODNESS DISPLAYED IN OUR SUF- 
FERINGS — THEIR USES AND RESULTS. 

Nothing is more manifest than that He 
who set the planets in their orbits, and hung 
the world upon nothing — He in whom we 
live and move and have our being, deserves 
our reverence and worship. Nothing is 
more certain than that He who maketh the 
heavens to declare his glory, and to show 
forth his handiwork, should receive glory 
from the intelligent creatures whom He has 
set to learn his character in his works. 
The voice of nature, if she had utterance, 
would be the voice of praise, and we who 
behold her beauty and feel her inspiration, 
should hymn her praise. In all her diver- 



116 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

sified ministry to our comfort, in the beauty 
that surrounds us, in the care that watches 
over us, we see the goodness and providence 
of God, and should be inspired with a gra- 
titude to Him, as ceaseless as his unceasing 
kindnesses. So much silent nature teaches 
as our duty, but she cannot reveal the con- 
sequences of our disobedience. She may 
give some uncertain guesses, but that is all. 
Her light reaches only to the grave, but re- 
velation meets her there, and shows that is 
only a dark entry to a throne of judgment. 
What was before but dimly known, what 
had not existed even in thought or dream, 
is, by the word of the Spirit, made manifest 
and certain, so that, we are without the pre- 
tence of any excuse, if we know and love 
not God. 

The more light He gives from Himself, the 
more evident is it that we must be miserable 
unless reconciled to Him. All the light and 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 117 

wealth of his provisions in Christ for us, 
which we have been contemplating, great 
as is the comfort they are adapted to afford, 
are yet demonstrations of the greatness of 
the misery we must experience from the ne- 
glect of them. Our misimprovement of the 
light of nature, and our neglect of the provi- 
sions of revelation, are not more proofs of our 
guilt, than they are of the sufferings we must 
endure if we are reformed and made happy 
at last. The way of our choice, the things 
we have set up in the place of God, show 
not only our extreme guilt, for which we 
must be deeply grieved before we can see 
it for ourselves, but that He can gain no ac- 
cess to our hearts till He has embittered the 
experience of what we have so freely cho- 
sen. Such is our nature, that He cannot 
make us happy or better, till He has first 
sickened us with the things we prefer to Him. 
Behold then the goodness of God in mak- 
11* 



118 USES OF ADVERSITY.^ 

ing the '' way of transgressors hard ;^^ in 
hedging with thorns the way to perdition ; 
in defeating our plans of worldly repose ; 
in all the experience He gives to make us 
feel that we are strangers and pilgrims on 
the earth ! Should he do less than make 
ours a life of affliction, while it is one of 
disservice to Him, the proofs of His benevo- 
lence towards us would be wholly obscured. 
When, therefore, we consider how much 
enjoyment is mingled with the sorrows of 
our condition, we should be overcome with 
the manifestation of the truth that " He 
doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the 
children of men.'' 

We are told that " God is love," and if 
we rightly understand his dispensations, we 
shall be convinced that w^hat He does only 
not excels what He is. We shall see this 
truth illustrated in all the afflictive events of 
life, if we observe their working. 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 119 

I can only trace it here in a few things, 
but they may serve to establish the princi- 
ple, which may be indefinitely applied to 
our experience. There is a feeling of se- 
curity engendered by prosperity, which dis- 
poses us to forget God. We regard not the 
fountain till the cisterns begin to fail. Mari- 
ners have no fear, no thought of God, till 
the sea begins to swell and the waves threat- 
en to devour them ; then they cry to the Lord 
who alone can deliver them out of distress. 
The pleasures and benefits of health are sel- 
dom prized till we lose them. Our daijy 
food, our freedom from bodily pain, are 
blessings so common that our hearts are 
but slightly affected by them ; but when 
sickness comes and takes away our strength 
and our taste for food, how often do Ave 
wonder that we could have prized health 
so little, or have taken so much as a cup of 
water without feeling that it was a blessing 



120 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

indeed. Our past ingratitude astonishes us 
now, and we think if we are ever restored, 
we shall not forget again the goodness of the 
Lord. Our hearts too are lifted up with the 
pride of our successes ; we have little sym- 
pathy for the misfortunes of others; but 
adversity comes and we are brought down, 
our pride is humbled, and our judgment of 
others is more charitable. A dear friend is 
laid low by disease. It brings the whole 
household to reflection, every heart is moved 
with compassion, all enmity, all memory of 
wrong is forgotten, not a virtue of life, not 
a good sensibility of the heart but is exer- 
cised by the event. Two brothers loved 
each other — the older seemed to live to 
encourage the younger — and the younger 
took his will as the rule of his life. They 
knew each other's thoughts and communed 
as if each loved the other better than him- 
self. But there was a separation. The 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 121 

approbation which had been the law of the 
youth's heart was forever withdrawn. Thus 
was his ambition dried up. He had been 
Uving to please one who was no more. To 
him now there were no charms in success, 
and no sweets in praise. Thus did he first 
learn that he was without God in the world. 

So we might go on to any extent in exhi- 
biting the moral effects of God's dealings 
with us, but only think what would be the 
result, if instead of the experience He gives 
us, our Ufe had a certain duration, we had 
no disease and pain, no disappointments in 
our hopes and affections, and no wants and 
distresses to bring us low. The supposition 
is enough to fill us with admiration of the 
goodness and wisdom of God in all his ap- 
pointments. 

We are told if we love God '' all things 
shall work together for our good" and there 
is a visible tendency to this result in all his 



122 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

dispensations. The promise is that all things 
together, not any one thing separately, shall 
work for our good. A thing may appear to 
be evil, and yet be an important Unk in the 
chain of events that shall so work. There 
are various kinds of good. The good which 
relates to this life may be withheld, and yet 
our ultimate good be promoted, which is the 
good contained in the promise. There can 
be no greater good than this, conferred on a 
creature, and whatever tends to promote 
this, works for our good, though it may 
seem to be evil and grievous. Nothing 
would more tenderly affect us than this 
truth, if we could see the dependencies of 
the many links in the chain that draws us 
to heaven. 

Our state is one of trial, and if God did 
not try us, He could not magnify his grace in 
us. We should know little of our corruption, 
little of our pride and mibelief, little of the 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 123 

misery from which we are raised. The trial 
of our faith is more precious than that of 
gold. If we could now see as we shall 
when all is over, we should see that all our 
bereavements and troubles are only so 
many parts of a great system of events by 
which we are borne along in our upward 
course, and prepared for the glory of God 
and the joys of his kingdom. 

Let us then know the weakness of our 
faith, and cleave the closer to our trust un- 
der every trial. True faith feels its weakness, 
and fears to walk without leaning on the arm 
of its Beloved. He lets you stumble a little 
and be troubled ; He sometimes amazes you 
with danger that you may cry unto Him, 
and know better where your deliverance is. 
So precious is the trial of your faith, and so 
does He strengthen it by all the pressure 
He lays upon it. Your desires after Him 
out of yonr distresses, are but the heaviiigs 



124 USES OF ADVERSITY. 



1 



of that life, which He breathed into you 
when He said, ^^Live V The faith of all 
your prayers is nerved by the power of 
Him from whom your"* relief comes. Oh 
that every troubled soul, every languishing 
and fearing saint, would think of this, and 
look with larger desires to Him for spiritual 
strength and comfort ! You would, when you 
had gazed but a little, see the hand of grace 
stretched out for you. The heavens would 
be opened and a mystical ladder would ap- 
pear, and angels be descending and ascend- 
ing with messages of love and supplies of 
strength. 

Nothing is more certain than that chas- 
tisements are to be regarded among the 
privileges of the redeemed. They are not 
awarded as the wages, though they are the 
consequences of sin 5 they are subordinate 
to mercy, and sent for purposes of good. 
They come not as messengers of displea- 



m 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 125 

sure, but as tokens of love ; and in dispens- 
ing them, God acts not as an offended 
judge, but as a forgiving father. They are 
intended to work " the peaceable fruits of 
righteousness^^ in those who are ^^ exercised 
thereby/^ so that they can say, " He hath 
done all things well,'^ and "in very faithful- 
ness He hath afflicted us/^ Their afflictions 
have a moral effect on others through their 
example, and a direct moral end in their own 
experience. By the sadness He gives them, 
"their heart is made better ;'^ and just in 
proportion as their spiritual improvement 
exceeds in value mere physical or worldly 
good, should their gratitude for the benefit 
conferred, exceed their grief on account of 
what is inflicted. 

This must be the right view for you to 

take of your trials, as you are assured " This 

is the will of God concerning you, even 

your sanctification,^' and the same must 

12 



126 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

needs be his will in all the dealings of his 
providence. " God chastens us not for his 
pleasure, but for our profit, that we might 
be partakers of his holinessP This is the 
whole design of your afiiictions, — their ulti- 
mate benefit to you and others. That 
God designs to make you partakers of his 
nature is also the highest proof of his affec- 
tion ; and to know that your chastening is 
appointed to perfect this resemblance to 
Him, should yield the sweetest consolation. 
Now that affliction \s fitted to work this 
resemblance in us, might be inferred from 
the fact that God in his wisdom employs it 
for this purpose. He has no pleasure in 
our griefs, " He afflicts not wilUngly/^ and 
we cannot therefore suppose He would 
choose this method if it were not the wisest 
and best. It is by disappointing our hopes 
from the world, that God abates our love of 
it, brings us to serious reflection, and reveals 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 127 

the evil and unbelief of our hearts. The 
process is at times painful, many dear affec- 
tions are wounded, many high anticipations 
are clouded, but it is all only " for a season.'^ 
The trial cannot be long, and it is all the 
while making us meet for a better inherit- 
ance, when " beauty shall be appointed for 
ashes, and the garment of praise for the 
spirit of heaviness.^^ Such is " the raiment 
of wrought gold,^^ which comes of the trial 
of our faith and patience here. 

The greatness of the pain we experience in 
the crossing of our desires and in parting with 
cherished objects, shows that we needed the 
trial ; that our affections were too strongly 
setting towards the world. The things that 
are taken from us, and for which we grieve 
so much, are all the good gifts of God, and 
if we cannot enjoy them, still loving Him 
more, He may not continue them to us, 
without permitting us to lose the best good 



128 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

He can confer. He offers us a good in 
comparison with which, all others are as 
nothing, but it is a good which we can ob- 
tain only on condition of prizing it more 
than all. He must either take off our affec- 
tions from inferior objects, and make them 
as steps for our ascending to Him, or let us 
perish in our choice. 

As parents, we would not let our children 
be spoiled in the use of the good things we 
give them, nor will God suffer his children 
long and fatally to harm themselves with 
his gifts. Believers are all his children un- 
der age; some are poor in circumstances; 
some are elevated in their position and have 
influence over others; some are ignorant 
and slow to learn, and others are hasty and 
unyielding in their tempers, but till they are 
of age, till the time of their inheritance 
comes. He suits his dispensations to the end 
of their training, never through impatience 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 129 

correcting them, never through caprice de- 
nying and crossing them, never through 
weakness complying with their importuni- 
ties, but ever severely watchful against the 
slightest approach of harm to them. Should 
He give them all they desire, it would be 
their ruin. Should he let them take their 
living and wander in "a far country'^ and 
find no "famine'^ there, they would never 
return, or think of the " abundance" in their 
father^s house. 

If then it be wise for us to pursue the 
greatest good, is it not kind in God to lift off 
ourburdens, and to mingle bitterness with the 
pleasures which tend to make us linger ? Is 
He not kind, and kind as no friend was ever 
kind before, in waking us from unsafe re- 
pose, in hastening us on with his rod, in giv- 
ing wings to the objects we attempt to grasp 
by the way, and which, if taken and retain- 
ed, would defeat our better aims ? Surely 
12* 



130 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

goodness beams forth in all the proceedmgs 
of the Lord. We should take kindly all 
his dispensations. We would run into evil 
but He wills our deliverance. We would 
remain in darkness, but He surrounds us 
with light. We would be ignorant of the 
enemy that is in our camp, but He sounds 
the alarm. We would grow to patterns of 
our own, but He fashions us as vessels for 
favored use. He gives, and He withholds ; 
He frowns, and He smiles, and yet in effect 
" no good thing is withheld from them that 
fear Him.^' All things work together for 
their good. They are gainers when they 
lose, and no losers when they gain. He is 
conducting them by an invisible working to 
the best rewards, and the measures He 
adopts are never more painful than He sees 
to be most promotive of the end. To them 
He sends afflictions, as He does his angels, 
that they may minister to them on their 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 181 

way to heaven, and they are to receive 
them as the evidences of his paternal care, 
and the pledges of his love ; " for whom 
He loveth He chasteneth.'^ 

They are to be humbled, but it is that 
they may be " exalted in due time.'^ They 
are to suffer, but it is " that their joy may 
be full.^' They are to serve, but it is that 
they may be fitted " to reign.'^ They are to 
be emptied and denied of all self, but it is 
that they may be filled with " the fullness of 
God/^ 

The sum then of all their sorrows is this, 
—that they are denied lesser, to prepare 
them for greater goods ; their inferior en- 
joyments are embittered or taken away, to 
sharpen their relish and looking for those 
which are full, unmixed and eternal. Thus 
it is that their ^' light afflictions'^ which are 
but for a moment, for time at most, "work 
out for them a far more exceeding and eter- 



132 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

nal weight of glory/^ Well does experi- 
ence attest the truth of the inspired word ! 
Sweetly does God make true his promises 
to the believer's heart ! Wonderfully wise 
and kind is the working of his grace and 
providence ! Let us enter into the sweet- 
ness that is treasured in the theme and ex- 
tract as it were a hidden solace from our 
tears. Let us bear hardship as good and 
manful soldiers of the cross. Let us cease 
thinking that our life is in ourselves, that 
we have any individual existence. Our 
humanity has been transferred to God, our 
life is hid with Him in Christ, and liv- 
ing should be but the making of us over 
more and more to Him. We are not alone 
in any thing ; we are never left or forsaken 
I in this mystical union of our humanity. It 

is a wonderful thing indeed, yet are there in 
it growth, sympathy and consolation, trans- 
mitting to us as it were the life and strength 
of God. 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 133 

His justice might, but his love will not 
let US do as we will. It follows us in our 
waywardness, and when by tenderness it 
cannot, with the rod it procures our return. 
It is not our happiness as we choose it, de- 
pending on things lower than ourselves, but 
our happiness as wrought in us, and outstart- 
ing in the growth of life, which He is con- 
cerned to secure for us. We have virtues 
and graces to form and establish, and He 
tries them, and puts force on them to give 
them strength. We have patience, and 
when it has "its perfect work,^^ how sweet 
and beautiful it is, and yet how meagre 
would be its growth, how obscure would 
be the lessons it teaches, if He did not cross 
and break it into service ? We have a hope 
which steadys us when our foundations rock? 
but what virtue would it have, if He did 
not cloud its objects and hold them from our 
grasp ? We have gentleness and forgiveness. 



134 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

but how would they break away and be 
overborne by the wrongs of life, if He did 
not draw and confine us with the lines of 
duty? We have love, but how would it be 
diffused and lose itself on creatures and their 
thousand charms, if He did not mar them 
with decay and snatch them from our view ? 
Thus is bitterness mingled with so many 
Iq of the streams and sweets of hfe, lest our vir- 

tues should have too tender a growth and fail 
under the burden and heat of the day. Thus 
do we see that our trials are, for the most 
part, needful to the exercise and proof of 
our virtues. If any view of our crosses and 
griefs can give us comfort, this ought; if 
any thing can bind up our wounds and dis- 
pel our gloom, it is the thought, that they 
are the wise disposals of Him who does all 
things in pursuance of our good. When 
denied the objects we cherish ; when these 
bodies are wasting with disease or racked 



1 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 135 

with pain ; when troubled on every side, 
it should be enough, that like our Divine 
Master we are to "learn obedience from the 
things we suffer/' and be perfected through 
the same; that our sufferings worthily borne 
will improve and exercise our best virtues, 
prepare us for and enthle us to the best re- 
wards; so fulfilling the inspired words, that 
" if we suffer together with Christ, we shall 
also together be glorified with Him ; if we 
suffer, we shall also reign with Him.'' 

What more can be said ? We could not 
safely enjoy more or suffer less. We could 
order nothing so well as it is ordered for us. 
God bestows his gifts on us not considering 
our deserts ; He takes them away in pursu- 
ance of our welfare, not complying with our 
desires or delighting in our griefs. Purely 
looking at our good, He never imposes any 
burden on us, or dispenses any pain to us, but 
when wisdom and goodness call for it. Our 



136 USES OF ADVERSITY. 

parts then are to rejoice in the disposals of 
his hand, to know the duties He gives us to 
perform, and when smitten with his rod, to 
yield, like '' the plants that throw their fra- 
grance from the wounded part,^^ some pe- 
culiar sweetness to the strokes of woe. So 
shall our will be done in his and his in ours ; 
so shall all bitterness be extracted from our 
woes, and we be soothed by our easing 
pains ; so shall light be sown upon our dark- 
ened path as " morning glories steal, beam 
after beam, upon the yielding night/^ 

The faith of Christ is the power which 
enables us to overcome all foes to our 
peace. It spreads over the world the bright 
shadowing of better things to come. It 
brings down to us the spirit of Christ, and 
in that spirit we can endure all troubles, 
and find in them the renewing of our 
strength. As shaken trees root deeper ; as 
the blast that beats down the flame causes 



GOODNESS SEEN IN AFFLICTION. 137 

it to rise higher^ so does faith enable us, 
when brought low by adversity, either to 
mount upwards, or to bind ourselves more 
closely and sweetly to the Rock we are 
resting on. 



13 



13S GROWTH IN GRACE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS ONGROWTH IN GRACE. 
IMPORTANCE OF ATTENTION TO DIVINE 
THINGS. 

A CHARGE against the wicked is, ^^ that 
God is not in all their thoughts/^ and a 
mark of the righteous is that they delight to 
think upon his name, and to own him in all 
their ways. If we consult the lives of dis- 
tinguished saints, we are struck with the 
evidence of this truth. It is not in their 
activity and zeal so much as in their thought- 
fulness, their eyeing of Providence in every 
thing, that their distinction consists. Herein 
is a great defect of Christians of the present 
time. There is too little of a patient, habit- 
ual, and nourishing meditation on divine 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 139 

things. The age is stirring and inventive. 
The mind is moving in perpetual eddies, 
feeding on excitement, and ever feeble and 
famishing without it. None are exempt 
from the general movement, and the tastes 
and habitudes it engenders. That the power 
of religion to console, enlighten, and appro- 
priate the whole man, will not be found in 
this animal and mental whirl, is a result 
which shows itself in a readiness to catch at 
and lose ourselves in the motions of strife ; 
in a predominance of intellectual over 
spiritual life, and in the wasting and dying 
that attends on our sorrows. 

Great discoveries in science and art are 
made by eyeing nature and catching her 
suggestions. Great results of mind come 
into it through prolonged attention, or are 
the products of a power which the food of the 
mind has concealed and strengthened within 
itself, till it is ours as the strength of the body 



140 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

is ours, though collected from the nourish- 
ment and exercise of years. So in regard 
to our spiritual nature, its improvement, 
and the great results we may attain therein, 
this law of attention, of eyeing the excellence 
on which the soul feeds ; this being with the 
object of our love, and taking in its shining 
till we have become strong and joyful, we 
hardly know how, is the sole condition of 
our advancement. 

Let any one rejflect on the case and he 
must feel it to be so. We may trouble our- 
selves with questions, and so do little and 
think little. There is however no difficulty, 
and need be no perplexity in regard to 
things we may and ought to know. We 
are no more dependent on God in matters 
spiritual, than we are in all the motions and 
plans of life, and it is our great encourage- 
ment that we are no less so. Our depend- 
ence is of such a nature, that, while it leaves 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 141 

US free, it encourages and aids us to what is 
good. The strength of the beUever is in his 
dependence, so that he is able to say, " when 
I am weak then am I strong/^ Out of his 
very weakness springs his confidence, hke a 
creation out of nothing. 

The grace or strength of God in him is 
such a thing as he will misconceive, if he 
contemplates it as something separate from 
himself It runs in his exercises, and in 
those exercises is his strength. His love and 
confidence towards God, are the power 
of God in him, and if they be strong, there 
can be no weakness in him at all ; no en- 
emy can gain advantage over him ; no grief 
or disaster can cast him down. As his love 
is not cooled, nor his trust taken away, he 
not only "inherits all things,'^ but over- 
comes them all, yea, the dying of all that is 
mortal is but a victory with him. 

Consider then what encouragements to 
13^ 



142 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

attain this happy estate may be presented. 
In intellectual attainments we may rise, 
through the application of our minds, above 
the masses around us, and become the admi- 
ration of the age, yet everywhere and in 
everything is our progress stayed, so that, 
he who knows most but learns to feel how 
little he knows. In love, in faith, in holi- 
ness there is no limit to our attainments but 
in perfection. As there is not an object in 
nature but reveals some of the Creator's 
perfections, so there is none but may become 
food to our love and knowledge of Him. The 
mind in search of Him, Kke the bee visiting 
the most unsightly as well as the most beau- 
tiful objects for the same end, may find Him 
m everything as a sweetness to be extracted 
for its use. Seeing Him in every object and 
in every event adoringly, is but the taking 
from Him the nurturing and the growth of 
our spiritual graces. It is the musing after 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 143 

which the fire begins to burn, the burning 
of our hearts within us as the words of wis- 
dom enter the listening ear. 

Attention then to sacred things is the 
method of the souls feeding on them. 
Through this it makes its approaches, its 
acquaintance with them, and through this, 
dwells with them in a sort of heavenly con- 
versation. As objects of mental investiga- 
tion are not mastered by sudden invasion, 
but unfold and disclose themselves to the 
attending mind, as by some mysterious vis- 
itation or report from them to it, so spiritual 
truths and essences brighten, magnify, and 
endear themselves as precious realities to 
the mind that watches for them, and holds 
them in attention. If a relish of them 
pre-exist, the thinking on them, the en- 
tertaining of them, the more habitual and 
earnest it is, the more dominion will it give 
them over us, and the more shall we be 



144 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

transformed into their likeness. It is very- 
evident too, that this process must make om' 
faith and hope clear and strong, because the 
grounds and affections on which they stand 
are thereby kept in perpetual view and 
bloom. 

The Gospel is a system of promises great 
and precious, whereby believers "become 
partakers of a divine nature,'^ not that God 
communicates any thing of his essence to 
them, but works a resemblance in them to 
his own perfections. But how is this done ? 
Not as a picture is made to resemble a living 
being, by the art and brush of the painter. 
There is a milk, a wine, a nourishing in the 
promises. They are words of spirit and life, 
and whoso feeds on them will partake of 
their purity, and grow to the image of Christ. 
Hence they are said to be made *^ clean 
through the word that He had spoken unto 
them.'' 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 145 

Moreover the promises call the mind to 
the holiest and most glorious objects. They 
express or embrace what may be known 
and enjoyed of God, and he that hath hope 
in theniy is not at once made pure, but ^wr/- 
Jieth himselfj even as God is pure. He 
takes not his ease, contented with his posses- 
sions; he rests not like a young bird in its 
nest, having its food brought to it, and gaping 
only to receive it, but he is hungering and 
thirsting ; he is working because The grace 
of God hath appeared teaching him to 
deny ungodliness and luorldly lusts, and 
to live soberly, righteously, and godly in 
this present world. He has great expecta- 
tions, and he must needs live in them and to 
them, looking for that blessed hope, and 
the glorious appearing of the great God, 
and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Herein is 
seen how we gain the bread and water of spi- 
ritual Ufe. It is by feeding on Christ through 



146 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

the promises. It is thus that we come to the 
stature of perfect men in Him, The hfe 
that shows itself outwardly and carnally, 
may be encompassed with infirmity and sor- 
row, while the new Hfe is gathering fresh 
strength and consolation from its fountain ; 
cheerfully going forth and bearing the bur- 
denand heat of the day, as outwardly we 
languish and die. 

That we are dependent^ is a secret of life 
and strength which we are to use^ not a 
weakness in which we may rest and despond. 
It is an argument for action, a pledge that 
we shall not act alone, but as co-workers 
with God, and that what we so do, will be 
done to some effect. We are never unaided ; 
and if we conceive of any Christian doctrines 
as discouraging our efforts it is a delusion, a 
snare either of Satan or of our senses. The 
world is teeming with the agency of God. 
History and our own experience are but 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 147 

records of it. The Spirit by which we are 
enlightened and sanctified is in us and about 
us, and pervades with Ufe all the truth He 
has inspired, so that it is living truth indeed. 
We cannot have a good motion which He 
will not aid. We cannot strike on any of 
the paths of the just which He will not illu- 
mine. We cannot war with any spiritual 
foe which He will not help us to vanquish. 
He is as the radiance of the sun, that from 
which we cannot fly, — the medium of our 
sight, that without which, seeing we should 
not see. In our dependence then are 
the springs and the riches of our power. 
Ah, would we but rouse ourselves, would 
we but rise to the "top of our speed,^' 
would we engage our mind and affections 
on heavenly things, and lose ourselves in 
them, as we sometimes do in the pursuit of 
worldly riches and knowledge, making our 
occupation a delight greater than all other 



148 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

pastimes, we should be wonder-struck at 
our advancement, our complaining of weak- 
ness and want of aid would cease, our yokes 
become easy and our burdens light, and we 
be found putting forth the strength of God 
in arms of flesh. 

The assimilating power of love, the ele- 
vating power of faith, the sanctifying power 
of the truth through the Spirit, all point to, 
and confirm the suggestions I have made 
on the importance of holding these things 
ever to the eye of the mind. That we are 
so worldly ; that the persuasion and sweet- 
ness of divine realities so little affect us ; 
that afflictions surprise us and make us res- 
tive and impatient, is owing to the wander- 
ing of our thoughts from these great supports, 
and to the despondency thus induced. A 
disinclination is thus acquired to think upon 
spiritual things ; the effort to do so seems 
unproductive because it is not long sustained, 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 149 

and thus are we tempted by our own indo- 
lence to forego its advantages. 

We must suppose that there is great power 
in the faith of the Gospel ; that it may be 
made to compensate the loss of all things ; 
and when we consider how feeble is its 
operation in most cases, contrasted with its 
evident capacity and design, we must con- 
clude the defect is our fault, and comes of 
not applying our thoughts with due con- 
stancy to the object and succours of it. If 
we have a little faith, or a little love, they 
will increase if they be not denied the ob- 
jects on which they live. So is it with every • 
virtue. We receive grace for grace. The good 
we have becomes the means and pledge of 
attaining more, as a little fire increases by 
every thing it catches on till no resistance 
can stay it, and its heat is felt by all around. 
There is certainly power and adaptation 
in divine truth to work our entire transfer 
14 



150 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

matioii, and as we know this to be the will 
of God, even our sanctijication, we are 
shut up to the conclusion that our slow and 
uncertain advances indicate the occupation 
of the mind by thoughts and objects adverse 
to spiritual life. Where that life is, and con- 
genial objects are cherished and gazed upon 
with a partial eye, there will be a growth 
of it, an increase which will overmaster all 
opposing affections. All the knowledge we 
have of the economy of our nature shows 
this must be the result, and all the analogies 
of our experience confirm it. The growth 
of this life in its several stages may not be 
visible. There is in it a hidden range of 
motive and sensibility as extensive as the 
field of its hope and observation, in which 
the roots of life may be striking deep, and 
its obstructions be clearing away, without 
any outward manifestation. 

It would carry me beyond the limits I 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 151 

must assign to myself, to discuss this subject 
further. I have presented these hints 
upon it with the hope that the reader will 
dwell upon their evidence, and carry them 
out to good results.. It is not more certainly 
our duty, than it is our privilege and bless- 
edness, to grow in grace. Things divine ex- 
pand and impart their virtue to us under 
our admiring contemplation. He whose 
mind is richly imbued with them will not be 
without support in trial. His enjoyments 
of this world will not be impaired but ex- 
alted. He will have a taste in them of what 
is far better, and his tears will be as seed 
sown for a harvest of joy. 



THE END. 



ERRATA. 

Page 15, last line, for upon the dead, read from the dead, 
" 1 10, last line, foi themselves, read ourselves. 



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